
Ask HN: I've been rejected for internships. What am I doing wrong? - indielol
I&#x27;m from India. I applied for internships at various startups, Facebook and Google. It&#x27;s been a week and I have been rejected by everybody(Twitter, Stripe, Palantir, Quora) except Facebook and Google, probably because they take longer to respond.<p>I&#x27;m trying to figure out what I am doing wrong. Is it the fact that I&#x27;ll need J1 visa sponsorship if I&#x27;m accepted, that the startups don&#x27;t want to consider international applicants? I consider myself pretty good at coding, at least for my age (20). I have experience as a successful startup founder while I was 17. I&#x27;ve done many freelancing projects 3 of them are on my resume. I have experience with NodeJS, Angular, multiple APIs (Twitter, Facebook). I know JavaScript, PHP and C. I&#x27;ve mentioned all of this on my resume. 
I&#x27;m studying at a college nobody knows about and have average GPA.
What am I doing wrong? Is this just not enough to get a good internship?
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jchonphoenix
Heh, man I wish I could be anonymous and post this... I've gotten offers from
most of those companies you've mentioned and worked/interviewed/resume sorted
for one of the ones with a higher bar. Here's some tough love, but hopefully
it'll be helpful. This is what goes through my mind as a dev helping out the
recruiters at one of these places:

1\. I've never heard of your University. It's not from the US and isn't
Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, MIT or Berkeley, so it isn't an immediate forward
to a phone screen. Not an IIT or Waterloo either.

2\. The GPA system I don't understand, but doesn't seem particularly high. I'm
not a stickler for GPA, but it seems to be close to a 3.0. At that GPA, even
if you were from a top CS school, it'd be a tough sell for a phone screen.

3\. I don't see a class schedule, have you ever written an operating system
from scratch before? Written your own network stack?

4\. Have you done something amazing worthy of recognition? Amazing top coder
results? IOI Medal? ICPC World Finals? Again not necessary for a phone screen,
but given that nothing else is a signal for a phone screen, this would be it.

5\. Expected 2016. Ok, at least if we hire him as an intern, there's a good
chance he'll come back as a full time. Sophomores are risky since most will
intern elsewhere next year and you won't be able to hire them back.

6\. No evidence of work (OSS contributions, intelligent blog, etc) to judge
you by.

I sometimes go through 3-4 interviews a day, and the fact is, most people with
perfect resumes and 4.0's from Stanford fail my interview anyway. Nothing here
signals to me that having a dev spend an hour in a phone screen with you isn't
a waste of everyone's time. You're going to need some hook to make it to the
next step. If there's a referral from someone internal that says to interview
this guy, we're giving you the benefit of the doubt. Admittedly, these are
snap judgements I'm making and are very likely completely unfair. There aren't
enough hours in the day to give everyone applying a shot at a phone screen, so
we need to weed out 99% of the resume's immediately--even if that means
throwing away a few that would have passed.

~~~
jchonphoenix
Oh and just to clarify, this is only the way I'd judge someone straight out of
school. Once there's work experience behind you, I care very little about your
school credentials since I have something substantial I can judge you by. When
you're still in school, I have nothing to go on, so these signals are the best
I can do :(

~~~
indielol
Hey, thanks so much for the comment. I haven't done most of those things that
are expected at these top tier companies.

The only reason I thought I had a shot was because of my side projects.
Apparently, just mentioning those in the resume isn't going to cut it. I guess
OSS contributions definitely help in this regard (work experience).

------
iamshs
It is not because of the Visa. Sponsoring a J1/F1 visa is easy for
companies/Universities.

Are you in second or third year? Now is not the time for app'ing. October end
is when you should typically start. Don't worry about Visa, it is easily
arranged and in short time.

Indian students bombard inboxes at intern time, so you have to be daft with
everything in your email, subject line, email and a one page resume. Time your
app to US mornings so that your email stays at top. Learn to use Google
advanced search. Trawl LinkedIn. My knowledge is 6 year old but I did
successfully interned at US and Europe, get hold of one of your IIT/NIT
friends and ask for some modern fundaes. If you want to contact me, my email
is in profile. I am going to sleep, so maybe in email tomorrow I can be more
detailed.

~~~
indielol
I'm in 3rd year. Thanks! I will email you.

------
phaus
I think its probably a combination of your average GPA from a school nobody's
heard about and the fact that you only seem to be applying to companies that
have a reputation for extremely high standards.

You seem to be looking at normal companies the exact same way the elite
companies are viewing an average student from an average school. Perhaps you
should branch out? There are tons of great companies out there with internship
programs.

And as others have mentioned, I'd try to sell the entrepreneurship experience
and any side-projects you may have completed harder than anything else.

Keep trying. Keep submitting as many applications as you can to different
companies right up until the day you accept an internship.

~~~
indielol
I think it was a mistake to put "Education" at the top. Here's my resume -
[http://goo.gl/rswmvC](http://goo.gl/rswmvC)

~~~
ricardobeat
Yes. Education at the bottom, and you mispelled 'Governemt'. I would not
mention the GPA, and remove the 'Class X' stuff which I guess doesn't mean
anything in the US either. Focus on accomplishments and not academic grades.

------
brudgers
If your goal is to work for a famous company, getting an internship at a
famous company doesn't hurt, but in the long run over the course of _a career_
, what a person learns and the reputation they develop among peers is what
creates opportunities.

What makes a good internship?

Learning, not the name over the receptionist's desk.

------
bluerail
The things you have listed here all are becoming a standard requirements for a
Computer engineering job, but you need something specific to standout.

1\. You said you successfully ran a startup, How was the exit? Are you still
maintaining it?

2\. You consider yourself pretty good at coding.. Good.. But How do I know
that? Freelance projects are made with requirements pre-sepecified., Where are
your wild ideas in play? Do you have a github / bitbucket repository that I
can look out to?

3\. You have done _many_ freelancing projects, and why only 3 of them in your
resume? Create a portfolio page and list them all.

Increase the OSS contributions as mentioned in previous responses, get in with
the community, know people, These things can take you a long way...

------
bzalasky
Don't be discouraged. If you're open to constructive feedback, share some of
your side projects with the HN community. I'd also encourage you to explore
more opportunities, as Google, Facebook, etc... probably get more applications
than they can handle. We have an active internship program at Lookout Mobile
Security that provides real, hands-on experience, if you're interested
([https://www.lookout.com/about/careers/detail?gh_jid=2141](https://www.lookout.com/about/careers/detail?gh_jid=2141)).

~~~
indielol
Yes, definitely open for any feedback. Here's my resume -
[http://goo.gl/rswmvC](http://goo.gl/rswmvC) Thanks! I will apply at Lookout.

------
coralreef
I know great engineering students from reputable school (University of
Waterloo) that got rejected by Facebook and Google for internships.
Competition is tough, these guys get to choose from the best of the best, and
pay very well even for an internship.

~~~
indielol
I read a lot about how you get at least 1 interview if you have done side
projects. I hope I get that.

------
indielol
To anybody who wants to have a look, here's my resume -
[http://goo.gl/rswmvC](http://goo.gl/rswmvC)

