I am a CS major at the University of San Francisco and wanted to know it is hard to find an internship in the bay area. Any tips.
What year are you? Freshmen tend to have harder times finding internships their first summer.
If you are an international student (I’m guessing from another of your posts), you have the extra challenge that some companies cannot hire internationals.
Have you been to the career center at your school? Gone to job fairs?
Unfortunately, at this point, it’s late in the game to be finding a summer internship.
Sophomore I have been to career fairs and have applied a ton online. I am in the SF Bay Area and it’s still hard to get one even though they are many opportunities
Have you talked to your CS professors and asked for advice?
Applying online to about 10-20 places is the way to do it. I assume you used Indeed.com and similar sites. If possible, have someone who got an internship check your resume. Make sure you include your “hobby programming” accomplishments (preferably published in GitHub) plus competitions and awards that relate to CS.
Have done both. I know there is demand and there is a certain competition but I am located in San Francisco so I assumed that I would get something.
There is a listing on Indeed from only four days ago for an intern at SS&C Advent in San Francisco for a Software Development Intern. I don’t know anything about the company, but the qualifications they are looking for might match yours.
My son did not get any Internships for CS until summer of Junior year. Many companies want some specific CS courses completed prior to hiring so it can make a difference on what CS courses you will have done by end of Sophomore year. Alot of CS companies will use internships as a stepping stone for hiring permanently so some will only hiring graduating Seniors. Just keep applying and my son applied to over 50 companies and got 2 interviews.
I can look over your resume if you’d like. I graduated CS from a top school
From what I can tell, internships fall into two primary categories.
- Freshman / Sophomore - just trying to get exposure to professional jobs and companies. See if a certain type of job really captures your interest, etc. These are generally more local in nature and may be sourced through networking, friends of family, etc. They look very good on resumes. Show that you're employable and eager. Not a lot of structure to these programs. I would try to set up informational interviews with people you can get referred to. They may like you s much they'll offer you something OR they'll be a useful contact for the future.
- Junior / Senior - Serious internship in your desired field (hopefully). Very structured program with decent size internship class which is great for building relationships with people you may eventually work with. This is becoming a primary source of full time, new hires for the company as they use it as a summer long evaluation (of you and you of them). These have very formal recruiting processes, timelines. Your career services dept should be helpful in steering you to tools that help ID certain internships. Also, many of these firms will come to campus for info sessions, career fairs, etc. Most of these are not open to sophomores as they are looking for kids they can hire for full time the following summer (upon graduation).
It’s great if you can get the less formal internship the summer after freshman or sophomore yr but it’s not the end of the world if you don’t. Use the sophomore summer to enhance your skills by taking online classes, learning something new, etc. Of course, you can fit all that around a regular job. For example, S is taking Excel Modeling classes online (very inexpensive and excellent courses). He’ll take a programming class online. He’s not a CS kid but realizes he needs some basic skills in these areas to be a competitive internship candidate for next summer. Spends a couple hours a day on it either before work or after work, still has plenty of time to hang out with friends, etc.
It’s great you are thinking about this now. That is a great indicator of future success! Good luck.
My non-STEM kid at Stanford tells me that some CS major kids apply to over 50 internships programs. He says he was told that although there are many opportunities, there are so many other “competitors” all fighting for these internship spots that it’s not at all easy to get one.
My kid is in a non-STEM freshman, and he applied for 3 or 4 summer internship programs, several of them abroad, and he got the one he wanted mainly due to his language skills.