[taude]

It sounds like you're on the right path, combined with a decent personal passion project and some summer internships.

Some things I see that give me pause: 1) No project work. Lack of interest in building things on their own, researching frameworks, building out small apps, etc. I'd like to see even a small attempt at learning tooling and frameworks used on real world projects (it doesn't have to even be close to the toolings we're using, just anything).

2) Lack of reading the technology-centric, software engineering centric internet sites. Even attending a Meetup or two to start seeing what's going on outside academia (again, I live in a tech hub, so lots of opportunities).

3) Just general feeling of "hey, I got this CS degree, I'm ready to work", but not really showing much enthusiasm that they actually want to be software engineers as a career (it's a tough career that requires a lot of self-driven learning and curiosity to do it well). Believe it or not, I've seen students come through summer internships, and decide they actually don't like the real world day-to-day software development for a career.

[MRD85]

I do actually have projects; I mention that in my post. Which websites would you recommend however?

[taude]

I wouldn't recommend any in particular, but let your interests guide you. If your into front-end development, there's probably some bloggers who write about your favorite frameworks; or your favorite language; or if you're interesting in enterprise dev, you might follow InfoQ or Fowler's blog; Or with AWS you might read Cloud Guru's weekly updates on AWS, or Werner Vogels Blog, etc; you might be interested in startups, so your read one of the many VC blogs, etc...

I don't really have any preferences with what you're reading. Just the fact that there's some part of technology that fascinates you enough to read further, on your own in a self-directed way. It shows curiosity and initiative. I always like this part of my conversations because I often get to learn something new myself.