How to get a Software Engineering Internship in 5 Easy Steps

1.Apply to a TON of Places

This is the first step because it's the most important! This is what lets companies see you.

If they can’t see you, they can't hire you.

One mistake a lot of people make is only applying to a couple companies and then saying “No one wants to hire me! Everyone has rejected me or I haven't heard back from them!”

Before my first internship I applied to 258 different places before I got a yes. I only got five interviews from all of those applications and of those five only one accepted me.

(That being said it was sophomore year so it's different if you're a junior or senior. Things become easier as you move through college)

But my point is you want to spread your reach as far as you possibly can, and not discriminate over where you're applying to, even if you haven't heard of the place.

There are a lot of good tech companies out there that aren't big-name Brands like Google or Facebook or any of the other FANG companies so just keep an open mind and apply to as many places as you can.

For a while I was trying to do 10 job applications a day on the weekdays. Some websites that make it really easy to do this are LinkedIn(https://www.linkedin.com/feed/), Indeed(www.indeed.com/ ), and I haven't used this one but I've heard a lot of good things Zip Recruiter.

The biggest thing to remember is that you're going for quantity so just apply to as many places as you can and if you can only commit to one place a day that's good and it's a great place to start because it's consistency that eventually going to get you to some outrageous number and get you into a fantastic internship.

2. Solve Coding Challenges

The Next Step in conjunction to applying to those jobs everyday is to start adding coding challenges into your daily routine.

What's a coding challenge? A coding challenge is basically a small problem that you're supposed to solve in a limited amount of time.

Some websites that are really good for this are leetcode(https://leetcode.com/problemset/all/) and hackerrank.

I personally prefer leetcode because it's a little bit easier to read the prompts and get feedback. The main thing that most tech companies recruit with are coding challenges so they won't even look at your resume, they won't even look at your name, they’ll just go to send you a coding challenge.

Think of this like the first line of defense of getting into a company and proving to them that you're good.

Now some people don't like coding challenges but I think they're really good especially for new grads in separating themselves from the pack and proving that they prepared and if they didn't prepare that they can at least think of solutions quickly on the spot.(As a side note when I started doing coding challenges I can only do the easy problems so if you have to start with only doing the easy problems that's totally fine just start slow and try to keep the consistency)

3. Have a Professional Resume

This is the company's first impression of you(Unless they send you a coding challenge) So it's really important to get this right and be as succinct as you can.

While you're doing those top two steps in conjunction it's really hard to get anyone to take you seriously if you don't have a professional resume. I'm assuming in the first step that you had some kind of resume.

Some of the basics are keep it to 1 page, have your graduation date, your school, your GPA, your contact information, any projects you worked on, and of course any other previous work experience that you have also if you’re a student including clubs and any awards that you've received.

Having a symmetric professional-looking resume can be the difference between having a recruiter bring you in for an interview or just getting your resume tossed into the heap in the corner.

Recruiters only spend about 6 seconds looking at your resume so you want to make sure it's really easy to read and don't put in filler words.

4. Confidence Building

This next section is also really important because it helped me when I went to job fairs and also just in general of keeping your morale up when you inevitably receive rejection letters.

Write an elevator pitch, during a career fair or whenever you meet with a recruiter you can introduce yourself quickly with your best accomplishments.

Basically you should have your name, your graduation date, some outstanding fact about you with work you've done, or something you did well in the class if you don't have any projects, the best thing you can say is any kind of past employment(related to tech), if you had a past internship make sure you put that in there. This is mostly for people who haven't had the internship so I'd say put projects or any apps you have on the Google Play Store.

Next put your statement of intent, something like, “This summer I'm looking for an internship particularly working with security” and it doesn't have to be security it doesn't have to be that specific just what you're looking for. You can find more information on writing an elevator pitch here: (Elevator Pitch in 4 Sentences)

Next make sure you give the recruiter something to respond to so ask a question like, “Does your company allow interns to work on the red team?” Or something like that that gives them something to respond to after your nice little spiel.

Of course doing coding challenges and getting a good professional resume will also help build your confidence so make sure you do those steps as well.

Another great way to build confidence is doing different companies' programs. For example Citibank offers an Early ID Program which allows underrepresented groups to get an early view into Citibank and do their mentorship program.

I did this program and was offered an intern position through them. So even if the program doesn't necessarily say that it will end in a job offer sometimes it will and just by doing these programs that will expose you to a lot of technology that your classmates or peers haven't been exposed to. I highly recommend doing this because for me at least 3/4 of the time that ended in job offers.

If you haven't heard the term imposter syndrome before read up on that because a lot of people in the tech industry suffer from it. Yes, people who work in FANG companies suffer from it too.

Even if right now you don't feel like you can do it, you DEFINITELY can in the future if you stay consistent with applying and doing coding challenges.

5. Learn the Craft

Now so you might be wondering why I've put learn the craft as step five and it's with the assumption that if you're reading this you already have some kind of technical training either you're in college or you've done at boot camp so this is more to specialize your skills and read different programming books.

Which means working on side projects or doing hackathons with other people, any kind of collaboration or even just putting extra effort into your school projects so that it really shines through that you can code(you can put these on your resume of course).

Getting into the side projects a little more, it might be hard at first if you don't have something in particular that you want to make right now but if you think about a problem that you're facing or somebody you know is facing that could be solved by technology you can start coding up that solution.

It doesn't have to be elegant, it doesn't have to be nice, it doesn't have to look nice, all that matters is that you start it and that you're working on something you care about.

If you care about something then when you were explaining it to someone it'll really shine through that you’re passionate about what you were working on.

And if you were going to code a project by yourself you really have to figure out all the nitty-gritty by yourself, so in an interview it really shines through that you went through the process as necessary to solve problems.

(Just as a disclaimer this is how I was able to get an internship last summer(2021) and again this summer(2022) so if you did it differently by networking or something else that's awesome. Networking didn't really work too great for me so I just wanted to post what did work and there's a lot of different ways to get the internship and get into fantastic companies. Everyone has their own path and I wish you the best on yours. )

Last Updated: 10/25/2021

Photo Creds:

1. Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash

2. Photo by Obie Fernandez on Unsplash

3. Photo by Gabrielle Henderson on Unsplash

4. Photo by Yogendra Singh on Unsplash

5. Photo by Clayton Robbins on Unsplash