<p>I'm currently a sophomore right now at Cal majoring in EECS. I want to get an internship for the summer but I have absolutely no previous job experience. My question is, how I do I go about finding one with no experience? What can I even put on my painfully empty resume? I'm thinking of just applying for everything I see (and going to all the career fairs I can) and hope I get lucky. My GPA is a 3.5, which should be adequate for most companies right?</p>
<p>Apply everywhere. For the smaller companies, a LOT of it comes down to knowing someone or having a connection. I had 3.7-3.8 gpa when I went applying as an undergrad and never heard back from most, got rejected from the rest. Larger companies tend to be more about your actual qualifications as they don’t have time to look through apps individually (hey bureaucracy actually benefits you here, enjoy it itll never happen again). Government internships are even better this way. Here it depends what are your career objectives. If you want to stay industry, possibly work into a management position, you’re looking at companies like Lockheed, etc. Research, could also go industry, but you also got NASA, DOE, various national labs out there. Think this through, or try one to see if you like it. Internship at DOE or NASA will greatly help you if you seek a job there later, same for other companies. You can get multiple internships, so dont sweat it, just dont waste it either. Put some thought into it, but shotgun approach EVERYTHING. Cuz 75% you won’t hear back from. Boss from NASA admitted they gave her a stack, she pulled out first one with a high gpa she came across, which was mine. Sometimes, youre random position in a stack of resumes will determine your admittance. Start applying to stuff in december (end of october if it requires a security clearance).</p>
<p>While I wouldn’t advise you to carpet bomb your resume you should definitely have a wider application net. Rocket is right that it really comes down to networking and talking to get that interview. Use whatever skills you have to at least build up a resume.</p>
<p>Were you involved in research? Know any Foreign Languages or other computer languages? Any class projects that you are proud of? Any scholarships/accolades? Any extensive ECs or leadership roles? By no means do you want to fluff up your resume but you can leverage certain academic positions to make up for efficiencies. </p>
<p>Another argumentation strategy is that you can tell the company that you have no work experience and that is precisely why you want an internship with THEM–you are interested in their field/industry and want to get your feet wet. </p>
<p>Your GPA is good and you have a shot of getting an internship. Make sure you try to write quality entries on your resume but don’t unnecessarily fluff it up. Network with the recruiters and give them your story. A lot of it will be luck and you will get rejected a few time but keep your head up.</p>
<p>Probably your best bet at an internship after sophomore year in EE is getting involved with EE-related activities and organizations. When I was a sophomore, I had some limited DSP knowledge from a team I was involved with since freshmen year, and had worked on some electronic projects as well as being involved in IEEE, which gave me an edge over other students.</p>
<p>Try to get a research job during the school year (now wouldn’t hurt). If you can’t get that, then anything for a few hours a week to put on your resume would help.</p>
<p>The fact is that just about EVERYONE starts their first internship with no experience. After all, you have to start somewhere, right? Most companies know this. Just make sure when you talk to recruiters that you let them know that you are very interested in their industry and want to learn more about it and get experience in it. Also, with no experience, GPA will be a much larger factor, and since you have a high GPA, that will work to your advantage. In the meantime, getting involved with IEEE (as mentioned previously) is a great idea. If you did any work in high school even as a bag boy at a grocery store or something, you can put that on there because it least it shows you can hold down a job. This early in the process, it is still ok to have some high school stuff on your resume, so as long as you don’t go overboard, you can feel free to put some of those sort of things on there.</p>
<p>If you’re a good coder or have some experience working on large projects, you might try to find something with Google’s Summer of Code or just find an Open Source project that you’re interested in and try fixing bugs. That sort of thing looks good on a resume too.</p>
<p>Try going to some info sessions to the companies you are interested in. I have had the most luck by going to those and wooing the recruiters there. </p>
<p>I go to Cal also, and there were bunch of info sessions the past few weeks (got 2 interview requests this way). Check on the callisto website for some upcoming ones. You also get some cool freebies and food most of the time :)</p>
<p>Flumoxed, what do you usually talk about that gets you these interview requests? Do you give like a 30 second elevator speech or just show interest in the company?</p>
<p>Being a sophomore from Cal puts you ahead of a lot of juniors from Podunk universities</p>