
Ask HN: Why can't I get an internship? - mehrzad
To summarize, I go to a fairly prestigious university (top 5 on US News) and thought that would be somewhat helpful in getting my applications a second look, but I know that tech companies want to see quality&#x2F;quantity of code and I&#x27;ll admit I probably don&#x27;t have a lot of experience showing on GitHub, even though I&#x27;ve had two internships already. I&#x27;m in the LA area and continually frustrated that I have heard absolutely no responses from anywhere I&#x27;ve applied for the summer. Yes, it&#x27;s probably a bit too late, but a lot of applications are still up on Indeed, LinkedIn, and Craigslist. The only job offers I&#x27;ve had are with places I&#x27;ve worked with before and I&#x27;m looking to expand my portfolio by trying somewhere new. Is the problem that I say I am not a CS major on my resume (I put applied math because while I like computers and code a lot I am planning to go into the sciences). My dream would have been to get a paid research position at a university but I think all those deadlines passed months ago. I&#x27;ve been rather annoyed at this and would appreciate any help. I guess I thought companies were willing to look at half-amateur fast learning applicants, but maybe the talent pool is too great.<p>github for reference: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;m3hr<p>edit: I am a rising sophomore<p>edit 2: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dropbox.com&#x2F;s&#x2F;odcjcf7hsvzaxm7&#x2F;farnoosh_2015_cv.pdf?dl=0 resume, though I&#x27;m a little uncomfortable to post this for privacy reasons
======
theaccordance
1\. Move your Work Experience ahead of your education, it holds more value on
the paper than simply where you're at today.

2\. I'll apologize for being so blunt, but the bullet points for your work
experience suck. They're dry and could use additional context. Your work
experience needs to tell a story of what you were doing so you come off as
intriguing. What sounds better, "Designed graphics, maintained WordPress for
company website" or "Developed & implemented new version of company website
using Twitter Bootstrap."

3\. Your more recent job title: get rid of the "what the job really was" in
parenthesis. Call it what it was, and elaborate that you took the lead role
when you reach the point of having a conversation.

4\. Clark Strategic Partners Job - Strip the job title down to "Web
Developer". You're not freelance if you're specifically defining them as an
employer under your work experience, and naming whom it was for is redundant.
If it was truly a freelance job, then rework that section with the focus of
you working for yourself as a freelance dev and talk about what you did for
CSP in the bullet points.

5\. The last job on your resume, the advisor one: Move that to the top if it's
still you're still presently in the role. Work Experience always goes what
you're currently doing first, followed by what you've done recently.

6\. Simplify your technical skills section. For you, this section should be
nothing more than a comma separated list of technology keywords. Don't
separate by experience levels - only put the ones on there you're confident
enough behind to take a job/internship doing.

7\. Your resume is too long, either trim content or tweak page
margins/fonts/etc to get the resume to fit perfectly on a single page. You
don't have enough overflow to justify having a second page.

~~~
mehrzad
I really appreciate this, thanks!

------
patio11
University researchers with budget can add another Undergrad Research
Assistant or similar at any time for any reason. Pay will be SUBSTANTIALLY
under what industry offers right now. Feel free to hit up your favorite profs
and ask who needs a productive coder to do scutwork. (It will be scutwork.)

I also recommend you going forward swap how important you think Github and
personal networking are. Assume sending in an unsolicited resume doesn't even
count as "applying." I know, this is the opposite of what the academy has
taught you to expect, but they are a funhouse mirrors version of the wider
economy.

~~~
mehrzad
Thanks for the advice, and I know personal networking is important but I don't
really like to straight out ask people if they can hire me (though I did ask
two professors I've never met). I am nearly certain most of the companies I've
applied to haven't looked at my application, but I just don't get why they
would post seemingly expensive ads on Indeed and LinkedIn. It feels
disingenuous.

~~~
patio11
_I don 't really like to straight out ask people if they can hire me_

That is a success-limiting preference and I would encourage you to start
preferring other things. If it helps, pretend you're just on a recon mission
not actually looking for a job but trying to ascertain whether there is a you-
sized hole in the project that they're running which you are legitimately
interested in. Scientists love talking about their babies to anyone who will
listen.

"So what are you working on this summer?"

"We're programming FPGAs to do automatic detection of human language in
content going over the wire using bloom filters."

"Oh that sounds interesting. Who are you working with?"

"Dr. Foo, Dr. Bar, and 3 graduate students."

"Who is your Unicode expert?"

"We don't have one."

"Really? That's unfortunate -- you're solving it with low-level byte
manipulation so if you don't have an intuition for what a bytestream of UTF-8
in Russian actually looks like that might be a bit difficult. Mind if I have a
quick go at the blackboard?"

"Be my guest."

"So let's take the UTF-16 case since it's easier to understand..."

 _5 minutes later_

"Huh, thanks for the explanation. I wish we could have you around every day."

"Do you hire undergraduate research assistants?"

"Yes."

"Then you can!"

[Lightly fictionalized from an actual research assistantship.]

~~~
dsacco
_> > That is a success-limiting preference and I would suggest you start
preferring other things._

In context this is one of the top ten patio11 advice quotes on this forum.

This also ties into negotiating salary, don't call yourself a programmer, et
al.

------
domitius
I'd keep Education ahead of Work Experience. It's fairly standard for college
resumes and since you go to Columbia it's the one thing that works most in
your favor when just sending your resume out to random places. Most places
spend like 10 seconds looking at your resume so make your "strongest" assets,
namely the fact that you go to Columbia and you've had some intern experience,
be the first things to leave an impression on them in that brief time.

Your work experience should be more descriptive and your resume should only
take up one page. Also, your name doesn't need to take up so much space at the
top and your GPA should be on there too, otherwise it looks like you're trying
to hide it. Use something like this
[https://www.careereducation.columbia.edu/sites/cce/files/Sam...](https://www.careereducation.columbia.edu/sites/cce/files/Sample%20Resume%20-%20Engineering.pdf)
as the format style too. I'd also go to CCE when you get back to NY and have
them work through your resume with you, I've heard they're decent with that
kind of stuff.

In terms of getting an internship, I wouldn't be too disappointed by not
getting something as a rising sophomore. The only people from Columbia that
get decent internships right after freshman year either know someone at the
company or are doing some kind of special program that you had to specifically
apply to. Even the summer after sophomore year can be a crapshoot, especially
for tech internships. My best advice is to just scroll through LionShare next
recruiting cycle and apply to everything you find interesting and reach out to
APAM alumni / profs and see if they know anyone who needs some help. The
seniors who just finished their internships will come back to campus and be
more than happy to brag about how they got their internship and probably be
willing to put your resume in front of their boss if you make the effort to
talk to them. With a bit of hard work and patience you can skew the odds of
getting something in your favor.

Btw, welcome to SEAS.

------
Jugurtha
Hello,

It depends what you're looking for. I interned with Schlumberger a couple of
years ago[0].

One of the things I have noticed is a two-sided lack of awareness:

\- People on HN (representative of the "tech community") almost forget that
software is _everywhere_ , not just at Google, Facebook, or Dropbox.

\- Oilfield service companies don't try really hard to attract top talent. I
mean, Schlumberger jokes that it's the "biggest company you've never heard
of". I was a teenager fiddling with my Samsung phone, and in the crypto side,
there was SLB technology and RSA. Later, I learned that they were behind Java
Cards and when I got to college, I used function generators and oscilloscopes
that were made by them.

Although from your handle and the name on the (dead) link, and the fact you're
in LA, I'd guess you are Iranian so you probably heard of it.

I think it's ironic that a lot of hackers almost think software is only
desktop or mobile. Tools that do a frigging MRI, Sonic, Gamma rays and what-
not tens of thousands of feet below the surface and spit data that's
visualized on the surface in real time. These babies are pretty neat
technology I can tell you.

I think that hackers can have a bigger impact in fields that are not
"obviously" "softwary". I mean, what's the marginal benefit of a hacker
joining Dropbox vs that of joining an industry where the cutting edge is
Visual Basic Macros.

One would argue it's not as glamourous as to work at Facebook, another might
argue that if you strip it down, the average Facebook user thinks Paulo Coelho
is deep, uses LOL and LMFAO in sentences, and shares Game of Thrones memes.

So you might look at where someone with your skills can have a bigger impact.
An LED in the night looks so bright, after all.

[0]:
[https://careers.slb.com/whoweare/news/jugurtha.aspx](https://careers.slb.com/whoweare/news/jugurtha.aspx)

------
lturner21
I had the same problem finding an internship. Then I found out that it was
likely because I wasn't altering my resume "keywords" enough when I was
applying to different positions. Resumes submitted online are usually scanned
by applicant tracking systems software in order to weed out applicants. I
would recommend using www.jobscan.co to optimize your resume with relevant
keywords and make sure you beat the resume black hole!

------
JSeymourATL
> Why can't I get an internship?

May I suggest an ultimately smarter investment of your time this summer;
absorb the lessons of Dale Carnegie.

Warren Buffett on Dale Carnegie>
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7gXaPY524I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7gXaPY524I)

------
gcz92
I know this won't help in the short term but I would highly encourage you to
participate in hackathons or work on side projects and list those on your
resume along with what you learned. It gives you character and makes yourself
memorable to the reader.

------
cbhl
Where's your resume?

~~~
mehrzad
added to OP

~~~
cbhl
I appear to have missed it since the link is now broken. If you're looking for
more feedback, email me a PDF? (My email is in my profile.)

General progression to a job:

\- resume is broken. no interviews. fix resume => get interviews.

\- bad at interviews. practice at interviews => get offers.

\- orthogonally, build skills actually necessary for job.

\- also orthogonally, meet cool people (also known as "networking") that you
mutually like working with. sometimes you refer each other to jobs. depending
on the kind of person you are, you might become co-founders.

\- ???

\- have a job

