

Why am I not getting an internship? Seeking advice desperately... - hyunwoona

Hi. I am a CS student seeking an intern position in software engineering.
Originally I wanted to work in a thriving start-up company, or a big company, but now I am willing to work anywhere in the U.S.
I thought my resume was pretty competent, but I realized that might be false.
What is the problem with my resume, or with me?
I do not have much CS background, or software development experience, as I started learning CS in my junior year, and I know this is critical.
However, my GPA is good, and I achieved so many things within just a year.
Please give me some advice.
Also, if I can choose to do, or learn just one more thing(e.g. basic HTML, PHP, more Java(Hibernate, Spring, etc), coding competition, Android app development, or Java software development) this year to boost up my possibility, what would you suggest I do?
I attach the link to my resume<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;document&#x2F;d&#x2F;1EIc0Q8LGD1C762qKVN_sKVLG80wvKufaEAoUcZxXQ7E&#x2F;edit?usp=sharing
======
Wilduck
>> I have been waiting for almost 2 weeks, but I am not getting any email or
phone call. This is exhausting and dismal...

Man, I know this feeling well. I just ended a job search a few weeks ago after
two months of looking. I'm hoping I can share a couple thoughts that might be
helpful. While I was looking for a full time position, and I have a couple
years of experience under my belt, I think these insights still apply.

First of all, how many new contacts are you making every day? When I first
started, I felt pretty good about the fact that I was emailing two or three
people about positions every day. When I told this to a friend who has been
very successful he said that when he's searching for a new position, he tries
to contact upwards of 25 people every day. While I was never able to get up to
that many contacts in one day, I did get up to around 15 per day. His specific
advice: "You should be emailing so many people, that when someone responds you
need to look back in your notes to remember what they do." This helped me a
lot.

Second, I'd like to know what exactly you're sending people. I didn't really
have any success when I would just send my resume over email or submit it to a
website. I found that my best results came when I emailed a person directly,
told them why I liked their company, included three sentences about myself,
and asked them if they had any positions available and could share some
information about them. I didn't even include my resume, and I only passed it
along if they asked for it. My goal was to make it as easy as possible for
them to get back to me, and take the conversation from there. It's much more
encouraging when you're getting a lot of small emails.

I'll admit that the process was soul sucking. But, with those two ideas in
mind, in the last two weeks of my job search I sent emails to around 50
people, got around 25 responses, 10 first interviews, 5 second interviews and
two job offers. I would be surprised if you couldn't do similarly well. Your
resume certainly isn't your barrier. Your approach may be though.

To sum up my advice: Lots of emails that are easy to respond to. You can do
it.

~~~
hyunwoona
Everyone gave extremely valuable pieces of advice, but your advice the
strategy is going to be really really helpful.

I am going to follow what you suggested, but if you could answer some of my
further questions, that would be great.

I have not been making contacts to much people. I did not even apply to
positions in a daily basis. I just occasionally spent 3~4 hours applying to a
bunch of companies on their career websites from either Google search or
LinkedIn/Monster/Indeed etc.

I just copied and pasted almost identical cover letters always with my resume
for every application ([https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e8rx0JiEGlpwxTa2--
7rQvla...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e8rx0JiEGlpwxTa2--
7rQvlac4Rw8quakZ2C5zKnagI/edit?usp=sharing)), as writing in English was very
time-consuming for me, and I was busy, and mostly, I knew they would not give
a damn about my cover letter attached to the application even if I had put
much effort on it. Thus far I had two (one on-campus and one phone)
interviews, each with a good company, but neither of them were through a web
application.(I got rejected from both, though..)

I did not care too much about the applications, and I kind of messed them up.
One relief is that I have not applied to companies I prefer the most, which
are start-ups and mid-sized companies in NYC, and I went to NYC to attend
Columbia University Engineering job fair 2 weeks ago. I talked to people
there, handed my resume(the original one that did not look very good), and got
business cards from 7 people from different companies. Of those 7, I had
memorable conversations with two, esp. with an entry-level engineer about my
Rwanda project(he would at least vaguely remember me. but they only use web
languages, so I may not fit..). There were quite many good companies based in
NYC in the job fair, and I have some 'stories' to talk about when I contact
them.

I would like to focus on the companies I want to go to, and I want to do well
this time. Of course I will have to apply for 'safety' companies, too but I
will put my time and effort in applying to 40~50 companies in NYC and Silicon
Valley.

Here are some of my questions. First of all, you said you contacted people in
the companies. Whom did you contact (HR? Engineer? Sr. Engineer? CEO? or
someone else?), and how did you find their contact info?

Second, what do you think I should include in the three sentences about
myself? Language(Java/C++)? Experience? or other soft skills and
characteristics? Could you show me an example?

Lastly, although you made "it as easy as possible for them to get back to me,
and take the conversation from there", it is not easy for a non-native like me
to write a letter that is easy and simple. Particularly what made your letter
easy for them to get back to you, not compromising the amount of necessary
information?

Thank you so much.

~~~
Wilduck
Sure, I can answer some of those questions. I'll start off by saying that
you're right that the process will be more difficult as a non-native English
speaker. But, after you've sent the first few email, you should be able to see
patterns between them, and you'll end up with a standard opening email and a
standard set of responses. Also, it helps to have a friend glance over the
email. I'm a native speaker and I still used my friends to occasionally proof
read my work.

As for who to contact in the company, I would say that you try to contact the
person who would be your direct supervisor in your new position. They're going
to be the person who is best able to evaluate whether you are a good fit for
the job, and if they decide they want to hire you, they'll make it much easier
to go through all the paperwork. If you don't know who your supervisor would
be and it's a large company, try to find a senior engineer at the company. If
it's a small company you could contact the CEO. These people at least will
have a decent idea of what positions are available and who you'll need to
contact to talk about them. Avoid HR at all costs. Also, since most
"careers@companyname.com" email addresses go straight to HR, try to avoid
those as well. Finding the email addresses can sometimes be tricky, but I was
usually able to find something by googling peoples names/positions/companies.

When I say "make it as easy as possible for them to get back to me" it's less
that I'm trying to write a simple letter, and more that I'm only asking them
for a small thing. Asking someone for a job is a large thing to ask for. Even
asking for an interview is a large time commitment. You simply want to ask
them for information about the positions they have available. After you've
received that first email it is much easier to turn around and propose a time
to talk on the phone.

I'll give you an example, from start to finish of what this conversation could
look like. I've written the first email such that you could fill in the blanks
and send it off. I've structured it such that the person reading could read
the first paragraph and immediately respond (the phrase "what follows is a
brief description of a recent project" tells them that if they want to skip
that paragraph and just email you back they can). The project is probably the
best way to do three sentences about yourself, but if you wanted to change it
to highlight more soft skills you could.

\------------------------------------------

First email to a company:

\------------------------------------------

Subject: What's happening at <Company Name>?

Hi <Contact Name>,

My name is Hyunwoona and I'm a Computer Science student at <College Name>,
with a focus on <Technical Skill relevant to the job>. I've been looking for
internships, and came across <company name>. I was particularly interested in
<specific thing the company is doing>. I'm hoping you could tell me more about
the work happening at <Company name> and about the positions you have
available.

What follows is a brief description of one of my recent projects:

As a project for <company || open source project || personal reason || class
name> I worked on creating a <what you crated> using <language>. My focus with
this project was to <description of why the project was worth doing (like:
it's never been done before, needed do it faster, or make it clearer)>. I
particularly enjoyed getting to see <specific technical aspect of the project>
up and running. <If possible, add a sentence with a link to the code>.

Best, Hyunwoona

\------------------------------------------

Response from company:

\------------------------------------------

Hi Hyunwoona,

The work we're doing at <Company Name> involves a lot of <stuff> and <other
stuff> right now we're working on <some broad vision>. We are looking to hire
interns in the coming <time period>

We're currently looking for interns for the following positions:

1) <Job Title A> \-- This position involves <Something related to what you're
capable of doing>

2) <Job Title B> \-- This position involves <Something unrelated to what
you're capable of doing>

If either of these are something you're interested in, we should discuss
further.

Best, <Contact Name>

\------------------------------------------

Follow Up email:

\------------------------------------------

Hi <Contact Name>,

Thanks for the response. I think I would be a good fit for the <Job Title A>
position and I'd love to talk more about it. Can we set up a time for a phone
call? I'm available <times when you're available>.

Best, Hyunwoona

\---------------------------

Of the emails that I sent that led to interviews, more than 2/3 went almost
exactly like that. Occasionally, I would have sent it to someone who would
pass my email along to a colleague, but from that point forward the response I
would get would still be pretty similar. I hope this helps. Let me know if I
was unclear about anything.

------
argonaut
Some superficial and not-so superficial thoughts:

Superficial things (not that big of a deal, but still things I noticed):

1\. Post a pdf so we can check whether you might have a problem with the
format of your resume (because I hope your resume isn't formatted like in the
Google doc)

2\. Some of those courses you list are ones that nobody is going to care about
(Econ, for example)

3\. Move your Honors section to the bottom, either before or after Leadership
Activities. Your education is most important, followed by experience. You
should move Technical Skills above Leadership Activities, and below Projects.
This isn't a set-in-stone rule - it's just that in this case, your leadership
activities aren't that impressive, so the Technical Skills section is more
important. The guidelines is that the most impressive and important things go
first.

4\. Shorten the summary for your NSF Researcher position. 5 bullets is too
much IMO. Also, 99% of people will have no idea what the first two bullets are
even talking about - find better ways of phrasing what you are saying. When I
read about " the Chung-Ross conjecture on a Clos network by simulating
different possibilities of data sizes," my brain just glosses over that.
Ignore this advice if you're confident that people at the firm you're applying
to will know what you're talking about.

5\. You use a lot of vague action words like "Worked on," "Collaborated," and
"Participated." Find better ways of saying exactly what you did.

6\. There are some minor grammar mistakes you need to fix.

7\. Ideally you should have your projects on something like Github, and then
have a link to your Github profile at the top of your resume, under your
contact info

8\. Your resume should be 1 page maximum. (One page, one side).

Some not-so-superficial things to consider:

1\. Have you thought about getting a personal website? You can put a blog on
there (with technical blog posts), and you can put a portfolio there too. The
blog posts don't even have to be that impressive - a well-written tutorial of
a technology you just learned can get passed around over the Internet. I had
an engineer at a really hot startup _reach out to me_ because of my website
and blog. I've had engineers at a big tech firm (rhymes with Godzilla) follow
me on Twitter because of a blog post I wrote. This can be time consuming,
though, so I think it's more important to have projects than it is to have a
personal blog (see #2).

2\. Also, it's hard for us to suggest things for you to learn because we don't
know what you're looking for. When I look at your resume it looks like you
have mostly a systems development background; is that what you're looking for?
For example, I know I want to work in application development - so I focus
mostly on web and mobile (iOS) development. What do you want to focus on?

~~~
hyunwoona
Thank you for your advice. The pdf version of my resume is :
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7tZUA6L0bdtSGlVQXRMYVFFdEk...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7tZUA6L0bdtSGlVQXRMYVFFdEk/edit?usp=sharing)

I find 4, 5 especially helpful.

For the first not-so-superficial, I know that would be helpful, but it is not
urgent. I will create and manage a personal website once I start an
internship.

For the second, I am kind of open to do anything depending on what position I
get, but I want to focus on Java(maybe C++). Additionally, I don't think I
have much time left to start learning and become good at a new
language(especially web.)

------
donuthole78
Don't seem to me like there's anything wrong with your background. It's maybe
a little "classical" for a job in Silicon Valley, but, especially with
internships, they don't usually give too much of a crap about specific skills,
you'll be able to pick those up on the job.

I suspect it is the way you present yourself. Judging from your post, you seem
pretty desperate. Don't be, there's plenty of jobs and people will literally
try to hire you off the street when you graduate. Your accomplishments
certainly seem better than mine, and I got a full time job pretty quickly. I'm
also a foreigner, that's a little pay cut, but no deal breaker.

Try to tailor your CV to the company you're interviewing at. They'll know and
appreciate that you spent the time and know what they actually do. Try to get
a phone or personal meeting early. They might be worried about your English if
you're a foreigner, and if they can talk to you in person and see that your
English is fantastic, that's one problem out of the way.

Oh yea, are you in Korea, trying to get a job in the US? That can be pretty
tough, as it's just so much easier when you're local. If you can, go to San
Francisco on a tourist visa. You're not legally allowed to apply for jobs on
that visa, but everybody and their mom does it. Just lie to to the border
control guy. As soon as you land, get involved in hackathons, meetups
(meetup.com, search for your favorite programming languages and topics there)
and so on. Do couchsurfing if you don't have money to rent a room.

All in all, there's lots of jobs here for anyone even remotely interested in
writing code. Even as a foreigner you'll be very well received and offered
internships and jobs. People are wary of "remote hiring" though, because you
just never know just from a sheet of paper. A lot in Silicon Valley depends on
your relationships with the people you know, and it's hard to get to know
someone from a CV.

~~~
hyunwoona
Thank you for your response. I am attending a college in U.S. on F-1, and I
can legally authorized to work during the semester or vacation using CPT or
OPT. I am considering flying to Silicon Valley this winter, but I am not sure
if this is worth the cost. I don't think I can meet many people there if I do
not have a network.

I have been waiting for almost 2 weeks, but I am not getting any email or
phone call. This is exhausting and dismal...

~~~
bloodorange
Also did you send your CV to places that work on free software? I remember
reading recently about how nice it was to work with Mozilla for your
internship.

~~~
hyunwoona
I haven't consider doing so. I just looked up on Mozilla website, but they are
only looking for students with web knowledge. I also visited Free Software
Foundation's internship, but they only have unpaid internship. I am so
desperate that I am considering this option, but my family would not be able
to let me do this. Their HQ is in Boston.

------
avenger123
When you don't have a way of making an impression by talking to someone or
meeting them face to face, your resume becomes critically important.

What I would like to say is that you do not know the audience that you are
presenting this to and sometimes your name will make a bigger impression than
anything on your resume.

It's unfortunate that these things still make a difference but it is what it
is.

Looking at a resume such as your's and being somewhat jaded, I might think the
following:

\- This is likely an immigrant. \- They may not speak English well and may
have had their resume written for them. \- I'd rather hire someone who I can
identify with rather this person who could be from a foreign culture.

Now, I do not know if you are an immigrant or whether you speak or write
English well. The point is that with your name and without explicitly giving
the opposite impression, this is what a reviewer of your resume may think.
Choosing you versus someone named "John Smith" becomes much more simpler (ie.
you don't get chosen).

So how do you counteract some of this? Well, for starters, you could use a
nickname for your first name. Remember this is to just get you through the
door. Secondly, if you did go to school here before University, you could list
your high school. Basically, anything you could put that would let someone
know that your verbal and written English is great would be good.

I am not saying that this is what is stopping you from getting an interview,
but there are many employers who have become very jaded by having someone come
in for an interview who was the perfect candidate on paper but couldn't sling
a complete sentence together due to language issues. These types of employers
would rather just not take the risk, especially for an internship type
position when they could just as easily pick someone else that looks more
safe.

~~~
hyunwoona
I've never thought this way. Thank you so much. I considered so many names in
two days, and finally decided to pick Eric(after Eric Schmidt and Sony-
Ericsson). I am even considering changing my name spelling from Na to Naa or
Rah. They will know I'm Korean anyway from my work experience in Korean Army,
but because of the first impression.

I went to high school in Korea, so your second suggestion does not apply.

Thank you!

------
ScottWhigham
>> The pdf version of my resume is :
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7tZUA6L0bdtSGlVQXRMYVFFdEk...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7tZUA6L0bdtSGlVQXRMYVFFdEk..).

That's a lot easier to "consume" for me. The formatting/etc on the text file
is just a bit much. When I try to "review" someone's resume, I find it almost
impossible to only review for content. Presentation is so much a part of a
resume that I don't think you can separate the layers into "content" and
"presentation layer".

Couple of things (all superficial):

1) It doesn't say that you are authorized to work. The spelling of your name
is the first thing people see - and their first thought is, "Is he a US
citizen, on a visa, or what?" You need to be clear about what you are seeking
rather than making people guess.

2) Why are you seeking an internship? Many people seek an internship b/c they
hope it turns into full-time work. If that's you, then you might want to find
a way to shoehorn something in that makes it clear that you really like this
company.

3) The GPA - I'd flip it around so that the 4.0/4.0 is listed first

4) Better filename - include your name. resume.pdf in all lower case shows me
that you weren't really thinking very deeply about me once I get your resume.

5) "Software engineering" is such a broad term - you want an internship in
"software engineering". Is there a way to make that more specific, possibly
for each company's specific needs?

6) Cover letters and targeted responses matter - the resume is only a part of
the entire process

Good luck!

~~~
hyunwoona
Thank you. The reason I put the resume in a shared text was to hide my name
and identity.

For 1, I think it is a good idea, but I do not find the spot to put it. Also,
should I write "legally authorized to work during semesters and vacations", or
"F-1 Visa OPT/CPT work authorization"?

I did 3, 4, definitely should spend more time to do 2, 5, 6. (All the items
are very pertinent. Thank you.)

------
throwaway1979
You have a decent resume (content-wise) but it can be vastly improved in terms
of structure/presentation. I suggest you Google around for some good looking
resumes.

Add English to your list of fluent languages. Normally, you don't need to
since you are at a US school. In your case, due to your extensive
International experience, people might incorrectly assume you don't speak
English. I was hesitant to make this suggestion since it is not politically
correct. But I'd rather help you than risk not being PC.

Put your technical skills at the very front. The first project you have talks
about some theoretical work. Minimize the technical jargon. I work in research
but even I thought you were "one of those math people". I realized you had
programming chops when I saw Python and that you implemented a board game in
Java. Those should be up front and highlighted.

If you can become a committer on a famous open source project that would
really help. This is a lot of work so don't worry if you can't do this.

Basic HTML and PHP can be learned in a weekend. Frankly, I assume every tech
person knows these things at a basic level or can learn them fast.

Maybe talk about SQL/Database knowledge. Learn if you don't have those skills.
Mention git or some other source code control system.

Best of luck! Keep at it ... you are a contender!

~~~
hyunwoona
Thank you.

You said I have a decent resume content-wise, but is it possible that I am not
getting an email from a single company because the resume is formatted or
presented poorly?

Is it just the wording and the order of contents, or also the format(template)
that need(s) to be improved?

Do you think it would look better if I change the name of the position from
Researcher to Research Programmer, and focus as much as I could on the
programming side(though there is not much)?

I guess it is a major flaw that I do not know Java related technologies, like
Spring, (maybe) Android, and Hibernate.

I don't know about database. I haven't taken any course on database yet.

What do you think is the most urgent for me to learn and do during the 6-week
winter break?

Also, if I have two options for my project: part-time contribution for one of
Free Software Foundation(GNU) projects vs part-time developing an inventory
management software for Rwanda and Tanzania, what do you think looks better?

Thanks!

~~~
throwaway1979
When I say content, I mean you have done some interesting work and would get
called for an interview if you presented it well. Looks like another comment
below said the same thing ... your resume ordering is not reasonable at the
moment. The same commenter said you should strive for 1 page and I agree with
that. You should get rid of your courses as well and just focus on technical
skills and work experience.

If you know nothing about databases, then I would say that this is the most
important thing to learn. Setup MySQL, create a bunch of tables. Do this by
hand as well as with GUI tools like SequelPro. Write some SQL. That should
take you a week. The next two to three weeks, learn about concurrent
access/locks. Learn how to use a cloud computing environment as well. E.g.
Amazon web services. They give micro vms for free btw.

Regarding researcher vs research programmer, think about what job you are
applying for. Since you want to apply for a programmer position, it makes
sense to sell that aspect of the work as much as possible :-)

If you are really getting desperate, I'll make two more suggestions:

1) Go to meetups/hackathons in your area and network with people. I have a
very strong CV and a few degrees from some top schools but even I get called
for 1 out of 3 positions that I apply for "in the cold". Networking just means
talk to people in a position to hire you or people who know people who can
hire you.

2) This is a controversial suggestion so take it with a grain of salt.
Consider getting some certifications in an area you want to focus in. I did
these when I was younger and it definitely helped. Don't waste money taking
classes IMHO. Your 6 week break is enough to get certified in one thing ... be
it Java or databases or whatever.

~~~
hyunwoona
I really want to believe that I will have much better chance if I present it
well. I am revising my resume according to the advice given here.

I think it was an excellent choice to change the title from researcher to
research programmer.

I have heard database is important, and studying it is now one of the things I
am planning to do during the winter. Thanks for the advice. I will get a
certificate in either database or system, but after I start working as an
intern. The reason is that I need to practice more algorithm to do well on the
interview and putting more time developing something or doing coding
competition will be more helpful.

Instead of going to meetups/hackathons in my area(I already missed hackathon
and I did not find any tech group in meetup in my area that I can go without a
car), what do you think of the option of going to Silicon Valley during the
winter, taking the expensive cost into account?

Thank you so much for spending your time to give valuable advice.

------
hyunwoona
I changed my research part to the following. Does this look better?

NSF-funded research Research Programmer January 2013 - December 2013 Buffalo,
NY

• Automated an experiment process of searching for a case to increase the
known lower bound for required number of colors in a graph theory problem

• Emulated functions in Python modules(numpy and Sage) into C++ to run on
systems without Python, leading to approximately a 40% speed improvement

• Wrote C++ and Python programs with my team that randomly generated hundreds
of a special kind of matrices in a minute, with forced conditions to avoid
repetition in an equivalent class

• Implemented edge coloring problem in C++/CPLEX by formalizing it in
constraint programming, enabling hundreds of matrices to be tested for
coloring per minute

• The paper is selected for presentation at MCURCSM 2013 conference on
November

