Ways To Get Tech Internships

Posted elsewhere, but sharing here

There are many ways to ultimately land an internship, networking is also just one of the many ways I have (or heard of others) gotten an internship. My first internship in uni wasn’t because I networked, but because I had amassed a portfolio of technical writing on my personal and other company’s blogs and that attracted the attention of the CTO of the startup as I had written content about Elixir, a niche that I got into because I was interested. I think students shouldn’t just pick one method and rush in head first without thinking of how to build their skills in this one area, but rather, learning to build their niche and interest

To me, internship hunting is a mix of factors and doing just one thing (even doubling down) has no guarantee of success due to the evolved nature of the job market right now.

My personal advice would be to pick something you are truly interested in and build a niche — this may apply to a technical expertise you might have (like I did), or being a phenomenal “networker”, or being amazing at competitive programming, or contributing to massive open source. Keep honing this niche but do also be realistic about the state of recruiting and keep polishing your resume and polishing your technical interview skills because those will always be needed. The niche will help you stand out amongst the sea of applicants, but you still need the foundations to carry you throughout the process.