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Landing an Internship
I am a sophomore and I am studying Computer Science with an interesting in Software Engineering, I have applied to a lot of internship over the past few months and I haven't landed any interviews. Please is there any hack to successfully land an internship? What am I doing wrong?
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camillaComputer Science
Oh also, it can take lots of applications to land something, on the order of several hundred. I applied to a little over a hundred unique job postings this cycle before landing something. You said that you've applied to a lot already, but if by that you meant that you've applied to 30 so far, then I hate to be the bearer of bad news but it might take an order of magnitude more than that
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1. According to popular sentiment the market is rough right now, so work is harder to come by and you shouldn't feel badly about yourself or your value if you haven't been successful so far. Also, it's rougher the earlier in school you are, and if you need sponsorship.
2. One line of effort that's pretty quick to do is to refine your resume. It also sounds like you're not making it past the initial screening, so this is something to emphasize. Making sure to include quantitative achievements, clear and easy to read format, etc.. You can also ask others for their advice, whether it's your friends in the major, your career center, or people online.
3. Another thing you could do that admittedly takes much more time is improving the content of things on your resume, like by adding personal projects, research (the beginning of the semester is a great time to reach out to professors), TAing, a relevant certification or two. The end of break/start of the semester when workload is nonexistent/light is a great time to take this kind of thing on.
4. Nepotism is great if you can use it to your advantage. One of my professors said that a referral about doubles your odds of getting the job. Your parents, family friends, parents of your friends, random people on LinkedIn (?? not sure about this one and haven't attempted it myself, but it's a thing that some people apparently do), are all people you could ask. TBH this is how I got my first internship.
5. Depending on what kind of companies you've been applying to so far, it might be time to broaden your search criteria. By that I mean that it could be worthwhile to look beyond large/prestigious/high salary companies, and seek out small or local ones too.
Hope you find something of value in the above, and best of luck!