So you think you can be an intern?
Internships are quite overrated but still very important in a student's life. Today we'll talk about how you can be internship ready.
Welcome to the very first edition of MichiSpotlight. I’m glad you opened this email today, I’ll make sure you’d be too. :)
If you find this interesting, don’t forget to share it with your friends or just star it so that you can refer to it all week in your inbox until the next one comes along.
I’ve got a bunch of stuff to share with you today. So, without further ado, let’s get to business. 😎
So, let’s talk about Internships!
I did a poll recently on LinkedIn to understand what kind of opportunities/resources students need the most so that I could cater to their needs through my newsletter. This is how the poll looked like:
A whopping 73% of the 1076 people who voted wanted Internship updates. While this is not that surprising, let me give you some insight into why exactly do we need to do internships.
Most people have this perception that doing internships would make your profile look good. While this is 78.97% true, it is more about have a holistic learning experience rather than just an LoR from some random company that might as well be fake.
In an ideal internship (like the one I did at Bottle Co.), you learn cross-collaboration among teams, network with new people in your target industry, develop a sense of professionalism and get a glimpse of what lies ahead.
If you have tried very hard, applied to a gazillion internships (not necessarily but when it feels like it) but still have no luck with securing any, you can try a few things:
For your resume:
Update your resume according to the job role you’re applying to. A common mistake students do is that they use the same resume everywhere (I’ve done this too). But you need different resumes for different kinds of roles.
Make sure you have scored all your resumes with Resume Worded. It is an amazing tool to recognize errors in your application.
Use action words in your resume, refer to this list.
Use Notion or Google Sheets to keep track of your applications. You can use these custom-made templates I made to do the same: Google Sheets | Notion
Some alternatives to Internships:
Alternatively, you can build your own project and make it open-source. Maintain the codebase with professionalism and make sure that the project you’re building can be scaled.
If you’re a lazy bee and don’t want to maintain a whole project on your own, start contributing to open-source projects or opt for freelancing.
The only problem with freelancing in my opinion is that you don’t get to experience proper brainstorming sessions and collaboration among the development team at a company. Apart from that, it is a great alternative.
Concerning your skills and search:
When trying to apply to an internship, look through the skills/tech stack required very carefully.
Recruiters want someone who can build stuff in a streamlined way that can be scaled eventually. They also want you to build stuff in a timely fashion.
Build one project, but make sure the application is functional, responsive, the UX/UI is on point (at least a little neat), and deploy it on Netlify/Vercel or a server. Do this using technology that you have never used before (but similar to what you have used if you’re still a noob).
As a part of Bottle Co’s Development team, I have interviewed many candidates to fill up intern positions with Flutter Developers, Frontend, and Backend Web Developers. About 85.45% of people had too many half-broken tutorial projects and only a very few had built something meaningful.
Clones of popular websites are very popular these days. In my opinion, it is very difficult to understand whether the developer has actually used their brain to build it or some step-by-step tutorial.
I’m not against tutorial projects but make sure you use version control platforms like git and GitHub to help technical recruiters understand, through a series of commits, that you actually understand what you’re doing and haven’t copy-pasted from some git repository. Or you can be me and make your commits look like a brunch of drunk tweets xD
For personal branding:
For all of the internships I have done to date (except in my first year), I’ve never “applied” to any of them. Recruiters found my profile via LinkedIn and approached me directly.
This is the power of personal branding and a properly updated LinkedIn with every detail about your career-oriented activities. It is not your resume so you don’t need to tailor it according to the role you’re applying to.
You can apply to many internships through LinkedIn as well. But make sure you follow these additional steps before submitting your application:
- Read the entire posting properly, don’t just look at the title and apply.
- Look for the Job poster. Check out their profile thoroughly. Send them a personalized connection request to introduce yourself and inform them about your application.
- Make a note about applying to this job on the Google Sheets or Notion Template that I’ve provided above. This would help you evaluate your profile in case you get rejected.
OOFee. That’s a lot of information, right? But don’t worry you have a week to implement it all. Feel free to reach out to me if you need any help. Just as a side note, this is more about development-related internships than the ones that require Data Structures and Algorithms. In next week’s issue, I will talk more about DSA related stuff.
Now enough gyaan. Let’s talk opportunities. 😻
Internship Update(s) for the Week
I have given you a comprehensive overview of things you can do to excel in your internship application process. Now look at this internship, follow the steps above, and make sure that if you’re applying you have the skills that it takes to perform well.
Dendrite Capital Partners – Fintech Industry
They are a B2B fintech SaaS startup operating in stealth mode looking for two developer interns (preferably in their prefinal year) to work on Frontend (React and TypeScript) and Backend (Python).
Their Founders claim to have more than 20 years of combined experience on Wall Street and have worked in areas as diverse as Algorithmic Trading, Asset Management, and Investment banking. They are graduates of schools such as Harvard/Oxford/Stony Brook and have 2 Ph.D.'s between them.
More internship opportunities to follow in the next few days (I’ll be posting them as and when I get to know about them).
If you are someone that creates opportunities, please reach out to me via LinkedIn
Events around the world
Now let’s get to the fun part. There are new competitions and events released every other day. It is obviously quite difficult to keep track of these. But, not to worry, Michi to the rescue!1!1!1!
Local Hack Day: Share by Major League Hacking
Local Hack Day: Share is happening from March 28th, 2020 to April 5, 2020.
It’s a week-long event full of festivities to celebrate hacking whether you’re a seasoned community member or an energetic first-timer.
Do not miss out on this amazing event by Major League Hacking!1!1!1!
Sign Up for LHD: Share today >>
HackYou by Merge.
HackYou is a 28 Hour fully-online, people-focussed hackathon hosted by Merge Intern. Hackathons are a great way to network with fellow hackers in the developer ecosystem. It’s happening from 10th April to 11th April 2021.
Make sure you sign up for it >>
Do you want to discover more hackathons?
If you are an Indian Student and you *need* to do internships, make sure you go to a lot of hackathons. Especially the ones hosted by Indian companies. They usually use hackathons to recruit seasoned developers who know how to build inspiring stuff in a short amount of time, sounds fair I guess.
Check these websites out if you want to participate in more Hackathons:
The 2021 Major League Hacking Season Hackathons here >>
Check out Devfolio: Your one application to the best hackathons >>
Devpost, where you post your hackathon submissions >>
Apply to the Summer 2021 cohort of MLH Fellowship
MLH Fellowship is a 12-week long program with three tracks—Explorer, Open-source, and Externship. Not to mention it is pretty competitive, kind of like getting into Harvard xD (just kidding). Don’t let your imposter syndrome keep you from applying to this cohort. :)
Learn more about MLH Fellowship >>
One of my LinkedIn connections wrote a nice article about his experience applying to the MLH Fellowship in the Spring 2021 cohort.
Comprehensive Resources
We often want to be bombarded with resources that we would probably never use. I have literally tons of them that you can use. But I’ll be sharing a few that I feel are worthwhile and you can check out during this week to learn more about your relevant field of interest. Today I’ll be looking at some development and Data Related Resources.
Development Related
bestofjs.org | Latest JS Trends
Best of JavaScript is a curated list of over 1500 resources—open-source repositories, learning resources, books, etc. Basically, all things JS. I highly recommend you to check it out often. Check it out >>
Upcase by Thoughtbot
Learn how to write clean code, git, Haskell, JavaScript, Ruby, etc. through coding exercises and videos. A brilliant platform for beginners and seasoned developers alike.
Pheebs…Check it out, Check it out, Check it out >>
Data Related Resources
Google Tech Dev Guide
Google has a bunch of free resources that go unnoticed by many. The Google Tech Dev Guide contains collections of resources curated by Google engineers and university faculty.
Explore any collection that aligns with your goals >>.
Full Stack Deep Learning
From theory to training to shipping models, an epitome of a comprehensive resource. There was no way I’d miss this. While no one can actually beat Andrew Ng when it comes to teaching beginners about ML/AI, I feel this is the course that will get you started on a path to wholesomeness.
I hope you got something out of this newsletter and found at least one useful thing here. Take things in step by step, you don’t rush it just because people around you are way ahead of you. No matter how much work you put in or how early on in life you achieve things, there would always be people who are way ahead of you. Just try to be better than your older self every day.
That being said, tell me about things that you would like me to talk about in the next edition of MichiSpotlight. Till then, I’ll be posting more blogs on Medium this week about productivity, personal branding, and some technical blogs as well. So make sure you keep an eye out or follow me there.
Signing off, Cheers!
It was a great article . But what do you say should a student first devlop skills,or focus on internships and develop them simultaneously
Very informative and insightful. Thank you for taking this initiative.