

Ask HN: Finding good interns? - adatta02

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about how small software companies have trouble finding good interns. I was hoping some people could share their experiences looking for interns.<p>Two big questions:
-How did you approach finding them?
-Did you suffer from either a lack of applicants or did you receive lots of applications but not very many "qualified" ones<p>-thanks
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spolsky
Interns are college students. College students can be kind of dumb about job
searching... for the most part, they will tend to apply to the companies who
come on campus, and ignore the companies that don't. Pick one or two campuses
and go all out to recruit there and you'll find some. There are some colleges
that have a particularly high concentration of good CS students: UIUC,
Stanford, Rose Hulman, Waterloo, and MIT are all good bets.

For a whole BOOK about recruiting on campus:

[http://www.amazon.com/Recruit-Die-Business-Young-
Talent/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/Recruit-Die-Business-Young-
Talent/dp/1591841615)

~~~
karanbhangui
Waterloo Co-op website: <http://www.cecs.uwaterloo.ca/employers/prospective/>

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nzmsv
I'm a student, graduating this spring. Here are my thoughts:

For one, I might not have heard of your company. It's not a personal bias
against small companies (and you haven't heard of me either :) But how do you
make sure students are aware of your existence? A popular blog is one way. A
job posting on a campus job board is another. You can also contact a secretary
in the CS or EE department, and ask to have your job posting sent to the
mailing list.

Also, don't ignore the colleges that aren't the usual suspects for a source of
good CS students. I'm sure students at MIT or Waterloo see more job postings
than students at my school. This just makes you lost in the noise. (and makes
me personally wonder if I made a huge mistake when turning down that Waterloo
offer of admission :)

