Hitchhacker’s Guide: Applying to Tech Internships
Summary — Tech internships are a useful way to further your career, enhance your CV, earn a bit of money, and learn about working in different fields and you can work on getting one today. There may be thoughts dissuading someone from pursuing one, but many of them are unfounded. Combining a bit of prep work with careers fairs offered by your university gives you a much greater chance of being invited to interview, the next step in getting an internship.
You’re well into the start of your university career. In the midst of being swamped with assignments and study, your friends are starting to mention these things called internships. Some of them have interviews and some even have offers. Meanwhile, you’re trying to figure out why your electronic die you had to build for a hardware class is constantly rolling sixes.
To top it all off, with recruitment season heating up, you may be seeing opportunities to attend careers fairs. It’s hard to imagine that these rooms full of unfamiliar people will result in anything other than anxiety.
The thought of building a career can be pretty daunting. Especially if you weren’t expecting to think about it until much closer to your graduation date.
But from here on in you can be making steps to a great career. An internship has you trial working as an employee over your summer break. They allow you to learn more about your field, meet interesting people, beef up your CV and experiment with a variety of career options. It’s really valuable for your career and personal development.
The Hackers at Cambridge team — who have interned at software companies big and small — have collected some of their experiences in applying for internships. From researching to attending careers fairs to emailing recruiters, we give you an insight into the aspects required and the steps you can be taking right now. This isn’t intended to be an exhaustive guide, so we hope it inspires further research into the ideas discussed here.
Should I Even Apply?
The summer while you’re studying is a unique time in your life and it can be spent on things other than internships. Perhaps you want to go travelling, volunteer, research at your university or spend time with family. Make sure to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of the different options you may be considering.
However, some common reasons for not wanting to apply for internships are based on myth, and I’d like to debunk them:
I’ve only just started university. I have to be in my penultimate year to even think about internships.
You can land an internship at any point in your university life. The point of internships is to learn something, so you shouldn’t be worried about a lack of experience.
Additionally, getting internships now gives you experience that will make it easier to get internships in the future.
I have to work in my home town/country. There isn’t anything worthwhile available.
This is simply not true! The whole world is available to you on your search for internships. For example, if you’re studying in the UK, you can absolutely find a role in Silicon Valley — you just need their help to get a visa. Many companies will even pay for your travel costs, aid in finding housing and pay a stipend towards living costs (in the same country or abroad).
You may also want to do more research about whether the roles close by are worthwhile (read the myth about prestigious companies below).
It’s too late to start applying.
Just as it’s never too early to start applying, it’s never too late. Even if many of the companies you’re looking at now say their applications have closed, there will be more. In fact, many companies (especially start-ups) will not have got around to listing their internship positions yet. You can even start applying after summer has started and get a position for that summer.
I have to take an unpaid internship. I can’t afford to live in <city> out of my own pocket.
You’re providing value for a company with the possibility of becoming a future employee. You deserve to be paid for that and you certainly should not be expected to pay your own living expenses for this.
Fortunately in tech, most internships are paid, so this is not often a problem.
Internships are only worthwhile at prestigious companies.
You can learn a lot from an internship at a big company like Google or Facebook, but this is true of working for many companies. For example, start-ups have a lot of opportunities for personal growth because an individual has a lot of responsibilities.
The Process
If you’re convinced that a tech internship is a good route for you to take, you can look into how you can actually get one.
Landing an internship usually follows this process:
- Apply for a position. Possibly get invited to interview, then;
- Interview for the position. Possibly receive an offer, then;
- Accept or reject the offer.
Side note: Rejecting an internship offer is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. You’ll devote a fair portion of your life to it so you should put some thought into the decision you make.
This post is concerning itself with that first point: applying. Typically, you apply either through a form on their website or by emailing a recruiter directly. Emailing a recruiter directly typically has a greater chance of going to interview, so opt for that if you have the option.
In either case, you’ll need resources that explain who you are. Here are the common ones.
CV (or résumé)
This is a document outlining skills, past experience and education that is relevant to the position you’re applying for. There are plenty of resources around for writing effective ones (look online and check your university’s career service), but here are some quick tips:
- Make the important details (university, names of previous roles) obvious at a glance.
- Add some details to make it stand out — colour is a really easy way of doing this.
- Aim for exactly one or two full pages. Long CVs are hard to read and empty space can make a CV look “incomplete”.
- Send it as a PDF. Other formats like Word aren’t easy to open in all contexts.
- Get others to review your CV. Your university career services and friends are invaluable here. People are going to be reading it anyway, so you may as well have a friendly face to do it first!
Links
These are links to websites that explain more about yourself. Here are some commonly utilised ones:
- LinkedIn Profile: Possibly the most important one as it allows recruiters to come directly to you (less work for you!). LinkedIn is basically an online copy of your CV combined with a social network.
- GitHub Profile: Here people can view open source work that you’ve contributed to. According to this recruiter, even when there’s nothing on the profile, a GitHub link alone is a bonus.
No joke, having your GitHub profile URL on your résumé is an instant bonus. Especially if there’s something there beyond just the blank profile.
— Square Engineering
- Personal Website/Blog: A chance for you to go into greater detail than your CV into work that you’ve done. This also has the added benefit of allowing richer forms of media such as video. This is more uncommon than the others.
Ahh! I have no work experience or projects to talk about.
This is a common problem. What you want to do here is write a skills-based CV instead of an experience-based one. This focuses on what you can do (e.g. write code) instead of what you’ve done (e.g. worked for Google).
As well as that, you can work on getting some experience without working for companies. For example, you can work on open source projects or attending hackathons.
Psst: Looking for a good hackathon to attend? We run one here in Cambridge — check it out!
What to Look For in an Internship
While what is valuable in an internship is highly dependent on the individual, there is something we can all be on the lookout for: the opportunity to learn. There is plenty of time in the rest of your career to do good work or to earn lots of money.
Good signs for learning opportunities at a company:
- The company actually has an intern program and has webpage somewhere explaining why they have one.
- The intern program assigns mentors to internships to personalise their learning experience.
- Reviews from past interns indicate good learning (people at your university are valuable for this).
Other aspects such as benefits, product, pay, etc… may all factor in according to your personal tastes. Have a think about what other factors matter to you.
Careers Fairs
Careers fairs are geniunely useful for finding internships. This is for a few main reasons:
- You can talk to recruiters and employees from companies to ask any questions about that company.
- You can get an email address for a recruiter from a company to apply to them directly, increasing your chances of getting an interview.
- You can find opportunities that you weren’t aware of in the first place.
How can you make the most of these opportunities?
Research the companies at the fair
Your university should publish a list of companies in attendance. Have a look through it and make a short list of companies you would like to work at. Narrow that shortlist down by researching the companies.
While researching them, think of some questions that would help to narrow it down even further. Are you eligible? Do they have mentors? Do interns work on projects that are used by real people? Is the technology interesting?
Work the room
You won’t have time to research all the companies in advance, so the fair is the perfect time to learn more about them. You can usually talk to everyone at a careers fair in a couple of hours, which isn’t much time compared to the value you could gain.
Have a set of questions prepared like: “What kind of work do you do?” and “Do you have internships available?”.
Get an email address if you can
If a conversation with a company has left you feeling like you would want to work there, try your best to get the email address for a recruiter. As we explained earlier, a direct line to a recruiter leads to greater chances of success.
You can simply ask them “can I have your email address?”, and the worst they can say is no. Many of the bigger companies will require you to go through their online application process regardless.
Be proactive after the event
You will likely have some leads after the fair — a set of email addresses for recruiters. Send emails to them with your CV attached within the next day, preferably on the same day that the two of you met. This will show the recruiter that you are proactive and communicate well, and in some cases gives you a chance to interview while the company is still in town.
As it goes for all emails when you’re trying to sell something (in this case, yourself), try to personalise it with some details of your experience so far. For example, bring up something that you and the recruiter talked about at the fair. This will be relaxing for a recruiter that has to sift through a lot of applications.
For the companies that you didn’t get an email for, start working through their online application process.
If all goes well, the emails and applications should result in some callbacks, which then lead to interview. We won’t talk about interviews here, but there are plenty of resources online.
The process of finding an internship can be complicated and confusing enough to put you off wanting one in the first place. However, by getting rid of negative thoughts purveyed by myths, putting in some prep work, and systemising your application process, you can make effective applications and bring you one step forward to a valuable career experience.
Further Reading
This in-depth post talks about every step of finding an internship including interviews and evaluating offers:
Got any questions? Have you been through the process and have some advice, or think that ours needs a bit of changing? Leave a response below!
