The Internship Hunt
Off-season Internships
Hi, I’m Victor, an incoming MS student in Computer Science at UCSD. In the past I’ve written The Internship Hunt: Finding CS internships in College, an article about strategies to obtain software engineering interviews and internships. In this article, I’ll be sharing about my experiences with off-season internships (in particular an internship where you take time off from school as part of a co-op program or a gap quarter/semester), including my experience as a Software Engineering Intern at Snap Inc. in Fall 2017.
Why do off-season internships?
Off-season internships are a way to obtain another internship — this can lead to an increase in prestige, help you to get more interviews, as well as more offers for full-time negotiation (two junior year internships can lead to two full-time offers), and overall make you a better and more competitive candidate through having more internship experiences. In particular, off-season internships are a great way to experience working at a different company, especially if you wanted to repeat an internship with another company (e.g. if I interned at Google summer sophomore year, and wanted to go back but also wanted to intern at Facebook, I could do Facebook Summer + Google Spring or Google Summer + Facebook Fall to try interning at both companies).
In addition, each company has their own unique factors/quirks — work environment, perks, compensation, location, products, company mission, culture, core values, size, learning/growth opportunities, etc. Everyone has their own factors that they value, and interning at multiple different companies can help you identify what you like and don’t like about each workplace, helping to identify the factors you prioritize (which is important by the time you’re looking for a full-time job). This is why I think it’s better to intern at different companies each summer instead of repeating, as I think you learn a lot more from being in a completely different workplace with its unique environment).
In addition, off-season internships tend to have significantly less interns (Snap Inc. had 80 summer interns and 10 fall interns) than summer internship programs, which means the internship tends to be less “fluffed” with intern events and tends to focus on actual full-time software engineering. That said, at Snap Inc. we still had 5–6 different intern events with all the fall interns, and it was easy to hang out and get to know the Snap Inc. Intern class of Fall 2018.
This tends to be much easier for certain schools, such as Waterloo who has mandatory co-op programs, and Harvard/MIT who have a 6 week winter break which allows for winternships. In addition, it tends to be easier to take a gap quarter for quarter schools than a gap semester at semester schools (you still have 2 quarters to take classes vs only 1 semester to take classes). Even so, if you’re able to graduate earlier than a 4 year pace, it may be worth taking a gap quarter/semester to do an off-season internship, especially if you want more internship experience, want to try working at a particular company, or intend to work in industry for full-time.
Why you shouldn’t do off-season internships
Specifically for fall internships, one downside is that you have to handle interview season alongside your internship, which will vary depending on how nice your mentor/manager is for letting you take time off to interview, especially if you need to onsite at those companies (I got very lucky with my mentor/manager who were extremely accommodating with all the onsites interviews I had, this may not be the case for everyone). It may be preferable to opt for a spring/winter internship over fall, so you don’t have to deal with the hassle of interviewing and working at the same time.
In addition, doing back to back internships (spring to summer, summer to fall) can lead to the possibility of burnout from work. It’s hard to know if you’ll be burned out without having experienced back to back work quarters, but if you felt like you were burned out after a summer internship and still want to do off-season, you might want to opt for Winter, which allows you to rotate school and work at an even pace, thus avoiding burnout.
If taking a quarter off to do an off-season internship delays your 4 year graduation , this can be a tradeoff/may be a benefit for some, but especially if you already have an internship, it might not be worth delaying for the sake of having an extra internship (this situation will vary person to person and will ultimately come down to your decision). Even if you can graduate early, you’ll want to consider what else you could do in that extra quarter/semester — traveling, starting full-time early, relaxing, etc. as those could all be more valuable than an off-season internship.
If you’re on an F1 Visa or need financial aid for the school year, depending on the school, you may not be able to do an off-season internship (at least not one that requires a gap quarter from school), if it meant you wouldn’t be a full-time student for the rest of the year.
One understated aspect of off-season internships is that they can be rather lonely with fewer interns, especially if you’re away from home and friends (the FOMO is real when you see all your friends hanging out and you’re unable to join them). For some, it’s a tradeoff of the opportunity to experience life alone in a new place and make new friends, but for others this can be difficult and there were times where I wished I was back at school with my friends.
In addition, depending on your learning style and preferences, you might get more out of an extra quarter at school over working at an off-season internship — this will vary person to person, but some people learn better at school than at work, or if you wanted to take grad classes instead of interning at some company. Again, this will probably be a case by case basis depending on the company and the alternatives, but it depends on what you deem would benefit you the best.
Landing off-season internships
The biggest misconception I’ve seen is that there’s “specific windows” for applying for off-season internships. While some companies have dedicated apps for off-season (Winter/Spring/Fall) positions (ex: Google, Amazon, Yelp, Jane Street, HRT), the majority of companies don’t.
For most companies, the way to get off-season internship offers is to interview for summer internships, get an offer for a summer internship, and then ask your recruiter to move the dates to another quarter, as you’d like to consider the possibility of an off-season internship to get multiple internship experiences. Most recruiters will be receptive, as you’ve already met the hiring bar, although occasionally they may not be able to move your dates to a specific timeline due to headcount/no availabilities(though perhaps the other company you plan to also intern at will be ok with those dates).
However, the general rule of recruiting applies: be early. It’s much easier to ask for more time availabilities when intern spots haven’t really filled up and the company can relegate head count to fit off-season interns. You don’t want to be scrambling to look for an off-season internship in Spring just because you couldn’t find any summer internships! (In other words, if you haven’t started applying for Summer 2019/off-season in 2019, start now.)
In Summary
Many companies (large and small) will offer off-season internships if you ask about the possibilities of them, for example the following companies all offer off-season internships:
- Apple
- Microsoft
- Amazon
- Quora
- Snap Inc.
- Uber
- Lyft
- Dropbox
- Palantir
- Rubrik
- Robinhood
- Square
- Twitch
- Affirm
- Coinbase
- Yelp
- Jane Street
- Hudson River Trading
- Five Rings
Off-season internships provide a valuable opportunity to gain additional work experience beyond just summer internships. It’s an experience that I highly recommend if you have the time and opportunities for it, but it can be hard to fit into your schedule and might not be for everyone. If you have any further questions or wish to contact me about anything I can be reached at my Facebook.
