
Ask HN: How can students with no work/intership experience stand out? - realfrontier
I&#x27;m currently in my third year of computer science (major Canadian university) and I&#x27;ve been applying to internships but haven&#x27;t been getting any responses.<p>What do you look for in students with no prior experience? How can I stand out?
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michaelpinto
Q. What direction do you want to go in with your career?

I think you really need to think through where you'd like to be when you get
out of school. Do you want to work at a big company or a startup? Is there a
problem space that you have a passion for (this can be anything from finding a
cure to cancer to videogames)? Are you into a certain language or a certain
platform?

The people who stand out are the people who have a passion for something. If
your obsession is stock picking then you want to bring that passion to an
investment bank. If your obsession is self driving cars then you want to work
for a tesla or uber.

There's the old Woody Allen phrase "half of life is showing up". In a humorous
way you can envision a slacker who shows up for school and manages to pass,
but in reality it's showing up and hooking up with the people or projects that
you want to work on.

By the way I trick I use is this: If I gave you several million dollars and no
conditions, what would you do with it? Would you buy a house or start a
startup? By the way don't buy the hype and be honest with yourself on that
answer. Many people are selling startups, but there's a world of people doing
other things out there.

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dylanhassinger
make a portfolio from volunteer projects

i.e. build a website for your friend who is a DJ

or create a small open source project to solve one of your own problems

or find something that bugs you about a famous product and design a prototype
that shows a better way

then blog about it

