Intro
Here's my guide to landing SWE internships.
Just to build some ethos on why I think I'm credible on giving advice for this: this past cycle I was in the trenches. I applied to like 200+ companies, got 5+ interviews, and ended with 4 offers including one at Stripe, the company that processes ~2% of the world's GDP and the one I'll be working at this summer.
I was also lucky enough to land a freshman year internship at Aramco.
I don't think what I accomplished was due to me being “smarter” or anything. It was just “optimizing” for the game that recruiting is. The reason I'm writing this is because I think I've learned a lot, and I don't see the point in gatekeeping this info, especially since I wouldn't be where I am without the help of so many people.
What's the Goal?
First, before you do anything, what is your goal?
The reason this question is important is because it'll allow you to realize:
- 01
- How much work you need to put in
- 02
- How far you are
For example, my goal was to always land the best internship possible. This meant that even when I had 3 offers in my hand, I still applied and still interviewed when I thought the company or opportunity was better.
If you're not as crazy/obsessed as I am, then maybe you can get content faster and not stress as much as I did.
Reality
Now that you have a goal in mind, let me be real.
Getting a SWE internship in this market is not easy, but it's not as hard as people make it out to be. If you're spending your time doing something — ie: focusing on school, being active in orgs, or just tinkering on the side — you will 100% be fine.
I have a lot of friends that didn't grind the way I did and now they're interning at Amazon, Patreon, IBM, and other strong companies.
I think going to a T10 CS program helps a lot, so even if you're entering your junior year and you don't have any formal experience, you'll be fine as long as you put in the work.
if you don't go to a target CS program then know your journey will be harder, but it's still very doable. you might have to fight for more oppurtunities to land a big name brand, but it's still possible, you just have to optimize for different things in addition to what i have to say here.
Resume
Your resume is single-handedly the most important thing when applying to internships.
It doesn't matter if you're a LeetCode demon if you can't land a single interview.
When it comes to building a resume, there are two things that matter:
- 01
- The content
- 02
- The framing
Content
You ofc need projects and experiences to put on the resume. This can be open source contributions, projects you've made, or previous internships/work experience you have.
I think the single highest EV thing you can have on your resume is working on something with real users.
This doesn't mean you need to build something from the ground up. This means you can contribute to open source projects or join orgs.
UT Registration Plus is a hack istg. Just push one PR to that jawn and you can say you pushed code to a platform with 60k+ users.
With AI, it's become so much easier to larp your experiences that one of the only ways to stand out is by shipping to real users.
Framing
You want to always put your accomplishments in the best light possible.
Don't lie, but also don't be afraid to put your work in the best light possible. If you had impact, quantify it. If you had users, number them.
Numbers and metrics are so important because they SHOW impact.
My rule is:
Every bullet point should be defendable in an interview.
If you're asked about a number, be able to explain how you came to that conclusion.
Don't say one of your coworkers/teammates measured it — a friend did this once and the interviewer just stared at him.
Also, make sure to use the XYZ format. Google literally tells you to. Search it up if you're not familiar with it.
Quick Note on Grad Date
If you're an underclassman, I'd rec pushing your grad date up a year on your resume. This will give you a competitive edge.
Even if you don't currently plan on graduating early, you definitely can and plans change. I initially never thought I would, but now I'm very heavily considering it if I get the return offer.
Also, if you think you can't, you probably can, but you may have to take a summer semester — your last semester — or switch from the BS → BSA.
Interview Prep
Some general advice is do 1-2 LeetCode questions a day.
I will say this is sound advice and def do that. LeetCode sadly isn't something you can cram like that, so start early and be consistent.
I'd highly recommend going through the NeetCode roadmap or solving the Blind 75 at the minimum. These are questions that have patterns that consistently repeat.
At the end of the day, LeetCode is just pattern recognition with a twist, so the more questions the better.
LeetCode Is Not the Only Format
Now onto some truth.
LeetCode interviews are not the only type of interviews. Out of all the interviews I've done, only 2 of them were LeetCode-style.
This doesn't mean LeetCode is obsolete and you don't need to do it. This just means it's not the only other format.
Some companies ask pure conceptual questions and others mimic real programming. These questions are harder to prep for, so your best bet is crowdsourcing info.
Most larger tech companies do LeetCode because it's easy for them, so practice.
Bloomberg has like 5 rounds of LeetCode iirc.
With that being said, if you want to be OD and a degenerate like me, then I'd recommend joining the cscareerdev Discord server and looking for people who're interviewing at the same company as you and asking for their experiences.
You'd be surprised at how much you can learn and how much of an edge this can provide.
I've also heard interview formats are subject to change this year with the addition of AI tools. I know I've heard Meta is switching things up, and I know Amazon asked some people some weird AI prompting questions.
Communicating
One thing that will always be consistent though is communicating.
No matter the technical interview, always explain your thought process. There should never be more than 5 seconds of silence. You should always be saying what's going through your mind.
This is partially why I landed Stripe despite not full solving a technical round.
Quick Note on Behavioral
STAR method is supreme.
This is the only thing you need to know for behavioral, plus stories/experiences. Use ChatGPT or a friend to prep beforehand.
ChatGPT is also really good at cooking up practice questions. I'd just walk around my apt reciting answers out loud.
Applying
Okay, now onto actually applying to the job.
Applying is easy, but applying fast isn't.
Nowadays, each job is getting thousands of applications. This means there are thousands of people applying for a position that will only be given to a couple hundred people at most, and that's for a larger company.
One of the only ways to get your resume looked at is applying as soon as possible.
I think for each interview I got, I had applied to the role within 2-3 hours of it dropping, if not faster. I remember literally applying to jobs in a movie theater.
The way I went about it was just spam checking zero2sudo's IG stories and applying ASAP.
Another method: search for SWE internships on LinkedIn, filter by “past 24hrs,” and change 84000 in the URL to 3600. This filters to the past 1 hour instead of 24.
Bonus: Referrals & Networking
Some very generic advice people give out is to network or get referrals.
Out of all the interviews I got, only one of them came from a referral.
Referrals are really common nowadays because of how large the pools are, but I think they're useful in some specific edge cases.
I got my freshman year internship at Aramco through a referral. The pool of people that could refer was small. Because of this, I think my referral mattered so much more because not many people had the opportunity of getting one.
This was due to it being Aramco Americas, a small American branch for a Saudi company.
I've also heard companies like Stripe & Databricks fast track your application if you get referred. There just aren't many people to give referrals, so they get valued more.
A way to determine if a referral is helpful is just by looking at company size. Stripe and Databricks have ~10k employees compared to Google's 200k or Amazon's 350k.
If the connection is harder to make, then it's worth more.
I know this might sound like a lot and I'm not gonna lie to you, it is a lot to do.
What I do want you to know tho is it's so worth the hard work and effort.
You get so many cool opportunities, you get to meet so many cool people, and on top of it you get paid to learn.
If you cared enough to read about all of that, then I'm confident you will 100% be fine.
Good luck with everything, keep your head up, and just have faith everything will work out because it always does, even if it doesn't seem like it at first.
If you ever need help, feel free to reach out. Always down to look at resumes, help with projects, or run mock interviews.