Ask HN: I've been rejected for internships. What am I doing wrong?

[indielol]

I'm from India. I applied for internships at various startups, Facebook and Google. It's been a week and I have been rejected by everybody(Twitter, Stripe, Palantir, Quora) except Facebook and Google, probably because they take longer to respond.

I'm trying to figure out what I am doing wrong. Is it the fact that I'll need J1 visa sponsorship if I'm accepted, that the startups don't want to consider international applicants? I consider myself pretty good at coding, at least for my age (20). I have experience as a successful startup founder while I was 17. I've done many freelancing projects 3 of them are on my resume. I have experience with NodeJS, Angular, multiple APIs (Twitter, Facebook). I know JavaScript, PHP and C. I've mentioned all of this on my resume. I'm studying at a college nobody knows about and have average GPA. What am I doing wrong? Is this just not enough to get a good internship?

[jchonphoenix]

Heh, man I wish I could be anonymous and post this... I've gotten offers from most of those companies you've mentioned and worked/interviewed/resume sorted for one of the ones with a higher bar. Here's some tough love, but hopefully it'll be helpful. This is what goes through my mind as a dev helping out the recruiters at one of these places:

1. I've never heard of your University. It's not from the US and isn't Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, MIT or Berkeley, so it isn't an immediate forward to a phone screen. Not an IIT or Waterloo either.

2. The GPA system I don't understand, but doesn't seem particularly high. I'm not a stickler for GPA, but it seems to be close to a 3.0. At that GPA, even if you were from a top CS school, it'd be a tough sell for a phone screen.

3. I don't see a class schedule, have you ever written an operating system from scratch before? Written your own network stack?

4. Have you done something amazing worthy of recognition? Amazing top coder results? IOI Medal? ICPC World Finals? Again not necessary for a phone screen, but given that nothing else is a signal for a phone screen, this would be it.

5. Expected 2016. Ok, at least if we hire him as an intern, there's a good chance he'll come back as a full time. Sophomores are risky since most will intern elsewhere next year and you won't be able to hire them back.

6. No evidence of work (OSS contributions, intelligent blog, etc) to judge you by.

I sometimes go through 3-4 interviews a day, and the fact is, most people with perfect resumes and 4.0's from Stanford fail my interview anyway. Nothing here signals to me that having a dev spend an hour in a phone screen with you isn't a waste of everyone's time. You're going to need some hook to make it to the next step. If there's a referral from someone internal that says to interview this guy, we're giving you the benefit of the doubt. Admittedly, these are snap judgements I'm making and are very likely completely unfair. There aren't enough hours in the day to give everyone applying a shot at a phone screen, so we need to weed out 99% of the resume's immediately--even if that means throwing away a few that would have passed.

[jchonphoenix]

Oh and just to clarify, this is only the way I'd judge someone straight out of school. Once there's work experience behind you, I care very little about your school credentials since I have something substantial I can judge you by. When you're still in school, I have nothing to go on, so these signals are the best I can do :(

[indielol]

Hey, thanks so much for the comment. I haven't done most of those things that are expected at these top tier companies.

The only reason I thought I had a shot was because of my side projects. Apparently, just mentioning those in the resume isn't going to cut it. I guess OSS contributions definitely help in this regard (work experience).

[iamshs]

It is not because of the Visa. Sponsoring a J1/F1 visa is easy for companies/Universities.

Are you in second or third year? Now is not the time for app'ing. October end is when you should typically start. Don't worry about Visa, it is easily arranged and in short time.

Indian students bombard inboxes at intern time, so you have to be daft with everything in your email, subject line, email and a one page resume. Time your app to US mornings so that your email stays at top. Learn to use Google advanced search. Trawl LinkedIn. My knowledge is 6 year old but I did successfully interned at US and Europe, get hold of one of your IIT/NIT friends and ask for some modern fundaes. If you want to contact me, my email is in profile. I am going to sleep, so maybe in email tomorrow I can be more detailed.

[indielol]

I'm in 3rd year. Thanks! I will email you.

[phaus]

I think its probably a combination of your average GPA from a school nobody's heard about and the fact that you only seem to be applying to companies that have a reputation for extremely high standards.

You seem to be looking at normal companies the exact same way the elite companies are viewing an average student from an average school. Perhaps you should branch out? There are tons of great companies out there with internship programs.

And as others have mentioned, I'd try to sell the entrepreneurship experience and any side-projects you may have completed harder than anything else.

Keep trying. Keep submitting as many applications as you can to different companies right up until the day you accept an internship.

[indielol]

I think it was a mistake to put "Education" at the top. Here's my resume - http://goo.gl/rswmvC

[ricardobeat]

Yes. Education at the bottom, and you mispelled 'Governemt'. I would not mention the GPA, and remove the 'Class X' stuff which I guess doesn't mean anything in the US either. Focus on accomplishments and not academic grades.

[brudgers]

If your goal is to work for a famous company, getting an internship at a famous company doesn't hurt, but in the long run over the course of a career, what a person learns and the reputation they develop among peers is what creates opportunities.

What makes a good internship?

Learning, not the name over the receptionist's desk.

[bluerail]

The things you have listed here all are becoming a standard requirements for a Computer engineering job, but you need something specific to standout.

1. You said you successfully ran a startup, How was the exit? Are you still maintaining it?

2. You consider yourself pretty good at coding.. Good.. But How do I know that? Freelance projects are made with requirements pre-sepecified., Where are your wild ideas in play? Do you have a github / bitbucket repository that I can look out to?

3. You have done many freelancing projects, and why only 3 of them in your resume? Create a portfolio page and list them all.

Increase the OSS contributions as mentioned in previous responses, get in with the community, know people, These things can take you a long way...

[bzalasky]

Don't be discouraged. If you're open to constructive feedback, share some of your side projects with the HN community. I'd also encourage you to explore more opportunities, as Google, Facebook, etc... probably get more applications than they can handle. We have an active internship program at Lookout Mobile Security that provides real, hands-on experience, if you're interested (https://www.lookout.com/about/careers/detail?gh_jid=2141).

[indielol]

Yes, definitely open for any feedback. Here's my resume - http://goo.gl/rswmvC Thanks! I will apply at Lookout.

[coralreef]

I know great engineering students from reputable school (University of Waterloo) that got rejected by Facebook and Google for internships. Competition is tough, these guys get to choose from the best of the best, and pay very well even for an internship.

[indielol]

I read a lot about how you get at least 1 interview if you have done side projects. I hope I get that.

[indielol]

To anybody who wants to have a look, here's my resume - http://goo.gl/rswmvC