Key Takeaways to Start Your Internship Journey as Technical Team at Tech Company (3 Months to Unicorn, 12 Months to FAANG) in The Third Year of College
Introduction
Hello folks, My name is Rahmat Wibowo. I’m a third year college student from Institut Teknologi Bandung, majoring in Information System and Technology. In this post, I want to tell you my story of preparing to become an Intern at Unicorn in 3 months and FAANG in a year, despite having lack of coding skills at the beginning.
When you think about becoming an Intern at FAANG it seems impossible for students from Indonesia. Because usually to become an intern at these companies many of them come from Singapore in the case of ASEAN. Becoming an intern at Unicorn also seems impossible for 2nd year. But, don’t worry in this post I would tell you how I managed to get this chance.
The Peer Pressure
There is a dark secret to attending a seemingly prestigious university.
It all started with the Covid 19 pandemics that started in early 2020 in Indonesia. All of the students at my university were sent to their homes to study online. It makes us feel alone and insecure at home. But the nightmare begins when people start to post their achievements on LinkedIn. Which made us think
Holy shit how come many of my friends have become an intern at Startup this early. Dude, we are only at the start of our second year. Interns usually start at the end of the Third Year.
In fact, there are a lot of my friends feel the same. A lot of FOMO and LinkedIn, a lot of peer pressure. Becoming a student of STEI ITB, one of the most prestigious faculty of the prestigious university made me suffer a lot from this. At first, I was really stressed and FOMO. So I started to learn web programming or data science at a really fast pace and hope to catch up without learning the basics and with a lot of stress. The result: I got nothing. Yup, you are right, I can’t do anything except ends up with stress. I can’t do web programming, I’m not good at data science. I just ended up procrastinating and stressed alone at our house.
Key Takeaways
- Learn at your own pace, don’t look to others, and get some rest
At some point, I just want to have my own inner peace. I forget others and enjoy my life without pressure. Have a break from this peer pressure for 2 months and start to gain my inner peace.
2. Take chances and start your own project
One of the best decisions that I’ve made was accepting the request to make a full-stack website despite don’t even know HTML, CSS, and JS. You should know that these 3 components were the fundamental building blocks of a website. Don’t even mention the dynamic website with the backend. You can see it here I only learn about full stack development a year ago from the moment that I’m writing this blog.
The most frustrating part of learning at college is you don’t know about the endgame. You learn about SQL databases. But only knows how to use it on CLI and doesn’t even know how it can connect to our application for example.
3. Appreciate your own growth each time you accomplish the project milestone even if it is only a small growth each day.
In two months, I learned a lot from this project.
Frontend: HTML, CSS, JS, Next JS, React JS, TailwindCSS, SASS.
Backend: MongoDB, ORM, Node JS, Express JS, JWT authentication, Google APIs, how to setup DNS, mailing services, and a little bit of cloud technologies.
I never realize the things that I really stumbled to learn one year before, I can accomplish it in just two months by forgiving yourself and appreciating each growth that you’ve made. It seems like, I just received a revelation and become a pro in a night.
4. Take chances cause you don’t even know what projects can make you succeed interview
In just after 3 months since I learn web development from 0. I got a chance to become an intern at a unicorn company in Southeast Asia, Grab. Grab is Southeast Asia’s largest mobile tech company. Do you know what makes me succeed the interview? Yup its a story of my previous projects. As an intern many companies not only look for the good one, but also to the one that eagers to learn. After i told the interviewer my story of doing my last project they were impressed and I got the position after the third interview.
5. Experience is far more worthy than having a huge GPA
If you send the resume to the company many of us only state our university name, not our GPA. I have a friend from the same university that have GPA below 3 that become an intern at other unicorns. Having work experience can boost your CV during the initial stage from the HR perspective.
6. Use ATS-friendly CV in a really clean format
for making my resume, I use this template and it helps me a lot. You only need 1–2 pages of your cv using this template.
7. Start small
You will learn a lot during your internship after you graduate from interns. A lot of companies want to hire you. I’m able to become an intern at AWS also thanks to my experience as an SWE at Grab.
8. Going to Prestigious University Works!
Somebody will say that we can learn how to code anywhere online. But, I also asked my seniors and concluded that many companies will look for a candidate from reputable universities after look
9. Register as soon as possible if you saw a post of open positions.
Don’t be a deadliner. A job recruitment process is really different. If the company met someone that passes the requirements that being interviewed before you. They don’t want to waste their time interviewing all the applicants. For example, in my batch, the one who submits the application for the intern position is around 2600. The recruitment process is really costly for the company as their employee needs to be the one to interview you directly.
Conclusion
Don’t be afraid to try to apply for a job even when you don’t have the courage to do so. Because the one that knows if you are suitable or not is the hr and the interviewer, not you. If you have a follow-up questions about this feel free to connect with my LinkedIn.
Special thanks to:
Patrick Segara — The one that give me the opportunity to grow at Bist league.
Geraldi Kusuma — My mentor at Grab
Faris Alfa Mauludy — My mentor at Xendit
Riza Saputra — My mentor at AWS
