Seeking Interview Prep and Job Suggestions for Very Introverted Engineer/Comp Sci College Undergrad

Parents Forum
1

I have two sons who chose to study engineering in college because that field plays to their natural interests and strengths.

One son is a recent college graduate, who is socially outgoing and seems to be doing well in his current job.

Second son’s future has always worried me. He is very quiet and introverted. He usually appears uncomfortable in social settings and one-on-one conversations, despite our efforts over the years to teach him how to “ask questions of other people, or just join a group and listen.” He never wants to talk about himself or his accomplishments. He is slightly more engaged if talking about an interest, like a new app or a podcast he has listened to, but his words are minimal and he rarely starts a conversation first.

While I tried to divert him to a few smallish colleges where he might get more attention in an honors program, this son decided instead to go to a larger, competitive school for computer engineering/comp sci, where there will be lots of smart, ambitious kids interviewing with the same employers he will be interested in. He starts college next month, and I am already thinking ahead that he should find an internship for next summer, paid, or unpaid if necessary. During HS senior year, a short, PT, unpaid internship fell in his lap from his HS comp sci teacher, but, unfortunately, son did not seem confident enough to try to extend that opportunity.

Do you have any suggestions about how to help him open up and strengthen his interview/conversation skills? AND, do you know of specific types of professional jobs or even specific employers that would pay decently for a computer engineer/computer scientist, but might not care about his social skills as long as he is competent and can think/do the job? Obviously, sales is not a likely career for him. Some of his strengths are that he is analytical, organized, and detail-oriented. He seems to have natural talents in math and comp sci. He’s an excellent writer when he has to be.

Friends keep telling me that there are “lots of introverted nerds” in engineering/comp sci and that he will get a job…But those same friends have successful, extroverted children. I am just not sure how he will ever get a paid job if he can’t make a good first impression in the interview to get inside the door…

Neither husband nor I studied engineering or comp sci. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!

2

First off, manage your expectations … it is hard to get an internship after just one year of college in engineering or comp sci. So, don’t assume that if your son does not get one, there is something wrong.

Strongly encourage your son to go to the career center at his school and take advantage of whatever services they offer – resume building, sessions on how to be successful in interviews, etc… This is where being at a bigger school can be an advantage – more likely to have a robust career center with lots of services. If his school has job fairs on campus, encourage him to go, even just as practice. DS lived in an engineering LLC his freshman year, and going to the fall engineering fair was mandatory for them; they didn’t necessarily expect to have much luck in finding actual internships after freshman year (some did), but the point was to practice how to talk to potential employers. Also, encourage him to look into co-opping; it delays graduation by a year, but you’re not paying tuition for the semesters he’s working, and it gets him valuable experience, significant $ during the semesters he works, and a foot in the door with an employer. And getting hired on as a co-op is a bit easier than getting hired on after graduation; colleges are usually somewhat involved/proactive about trying to set up matches for students who want to co-op.

From what I hear, particularly in comp sci, any side projects your son does on his own are particularly good fodder for getting oneself hired. He’s likely to be most comfortable talking about something he’s really invested/interested in. So also encourage him to do his own side programming projects as time allows, or to get involved in student projects at school (e.g., robot competitions, etc.) where he can make specific contributions that will give him something to highlight/discuss with people.

He’ll be fine, but being proactive even freshman year about working on these aspects will help tremendously.

3

As someone who’s sometimes been on the interviewing side (as I’m sure many others have been on CC), sometimes the quiet one is the most desirable candidate. You, mom, are not wrong to worry, but you also don’t know what he’s like when he’s in an interview.

As @ailinsh1 said, your son may want to work with Career Services to help him nail down a few talking points, but I’m sure that if he speaks about his work from his heart, that will shine through.

4

My older son is almost pathologically introverted. I’ve been tempted to get him the t-shirt “I’m not anti-social, I’m just not user-friendly”, but that would be mean. It’s like pulling teeth to coverse with him except about computer programming, games and books (mostly fan fic and graphic novel stuff on line these days - sigh.) He did not realize that there were job fairs for internships as early in the school year as they turned out to be scheduled. Luckily he’d worked for my brother’s company in the past and they were more than happy to have him again for summer after freshman year. The following years he had internships. While the interview is part of the process, equally important were programming tests each company got. In one case he got word of an internship through online friends when the internship he’d planned to do got scratched due to the financial meltdown.

He was in a pretty big CS program at Carnegie Mellon and he had more friends there than he’d ever had in his life. He still keeps up with many friends via some sort of listserv they all post on.

I do agree that many CS companies are very used to introverted kids.

5

I think for CS, the thing that matters the most is the person’s porfolio. I’ve heard of people landing jobs just because they have amazing projects they’ve completed in the past.

6

Agree with #1 that expecting an internship between frosh and soph year would be reachy. However, engineering and CS internships at for-profit employers should be paid (both in terms of legality and in terms of job market conditions).

7

My S is quiet and we had similar worries, but he really matured and gained confidence during college and ended up doing just fine in his job interviews. Give him time and he may surprise you. But to answer your question, I do think there will be jobs out there for a quiet, smart engineer.

8

OP’s kid is going to one of the top CS engineering schools. Many employers come to the campus to recruit. He will just need to be aware when there is job fair and when to apply. If he has decent grades, he should be able to get a job easily.

When we interview CS/Engineers, we look at projects they have done (both in and out of school) and we “tech them out” by either giving them a written test or drilling down on their projects. We wouldn’t expect developers to be as social. I usually spend more time to draw them out. As others have mentioned, when they are interested in a topic, they can be very talkative.

9

Is he a neurotypical introvert or on the autism spectrum? As in, does he show that he understands social norms and simply has a preference towards introversion, or are social interactions something that he simply does not understand? Often it can be hard to tell the difference but it is an important one. It may be worth seeing a psychologist on that issue, although to be perfectly honest the diagnosis for that is unreliable so take their suggestions with a grain of salt.

If he is just an introvert, then all the really needs is practice. Set up mock interviews, or have the school career center do the same, and make sure that he visits the career events right from the start. He won’t become a social butterfly but he will very quickly develop into someone who is more quiet than average, but still very much normal among people. It’s very common among more intelligent youth to have social awkwardness that subsides at around age 25. After that you mostly just have to practice social norms and soon enough you end up being normal.

If he does have some form of autism spectrum disorder, then social interactions are just going to be tough. The difference between standard introversion and autism is that in the former case the person understands social signals and just prefers his/her own company or that of a small group (and maybe has some social awkwardness) while in the latter there is some genuine deficiency in being able to understand how people are supposed to act. If this is true, then there is really only so much you can do, because understanding social cues that most people get instinctively will have to happen through deliberate effort every time (and you will have to learn to do it). I’m not seeing it from your description here, but it’s probably worth asking a psychologist about. In either case it’s best to know one way or the other, and they can probably offer you some guidance either way.

In CS, both traits are extremely common. In many companies, interviews consist almost entirely of doing trivia questions on a whiteboard, which perhaps may be easier than answering behavioral and resume questions (though personally I really don’t think it’s a good practice, it might help your situation). And there are more than enough people who are less than social on the job, so he would fit in just fine. Social confidence has to be learned, and for many introverts that just happens a little later than average. That’s probably all it is.

10

How does your son do at online communication? A lot of hiring in the tech world nowadays happens when geek-at-tech-company gets to ‘chatting’ with geek-at-college about an issue of shared interest and invites him to apply at his company.

Like @Dustyfeathers, I also have been interviewing and hiring tech people for decades. Your son being an introvert won’t hurt in the interview process as long as he is willing to answer questions and talk about his interests. It would only hurt if his interests didn’t align with the job. That’s actually one reason why those of us who interview techies like the quiet ones. We know they’re not BSing us just to get their foot in the door.

11

I would not fret (ok, ok , I fret a little too). He sounds exactly like my kid who is painfully shy.
She is attending a gigantic public school too. She would call me from time to time about her CS assignments.
I would ask her to discuss the issues with her friends in class since they probably have a better context of the problems involved. My kid would always insist that she did not know anybody in her classes (hard to imagine not knowing anybody in classes of 200+ kids).

She is doing her summer internship right now and she would tell me that for many days she would go through the entire day without speaking to any one. :open_mouth:

Speaking of summer internship, make sure that you kid do this early on. My understanding is that most of the companies who interview on campus would get the internship hiring cycle done by October. My kid did not start her search after she finished her finals in June. It was way too late. It was a lot of work doing this without going through the college’s career center.

12

Your son sounds like an ISTJ, which is what I am. True change comes from within, and we ISTJs can be as engaging as we need to…so when the frightening prospect of being unemployed surfaces, your son will figure out how to interview. I’d just try to get your friends (and maybe people on campus) to do practice interviews–or maybe even real interviews for summer jobs, and give him blunt feedback on his interviewing skills and constructive criticism about how to do better. Don’t lose sleep over this; as an introvert, I’d rather hire an introvert, as I don’t really like extraverts that much.

13

Some suggestions:

  1. Have quality code samples and projects at the ready. Don’t make them wait for you to go assemble something for them a week later. The best interviewers love that, even if they have to pass it back to engineers for analysis. A good portfolio will take you a long way. Can’t stress this enough.

  2. Most programmers, even the quiet ones, find it easier to talk about what they do that who they are. We love to hear the answer to this question: “What programming do you do outside of school/work?” There are two types of responses, generally: The “stammer”, which to us means “none”, and the “suddenly can’t shut up” which means “your hired”. Even if it something crazy like setting up a raspberry pi to feed the cats when you can’t get home, or making a Wii controller work the coffee machine.

  3. Be prepared for problem solving questions. such as “how would you approach x?”. Here’s the good news: the right answer is to not be glib and answer immediately; rather, stop and think, consider the problem and choose your words. Ask a follow up question if you have one. Unless you are interviewing for an SE (sales engineer) job, the thoughtful way is the best. Interviewers can see the wheels turn and you don’t need to be Stephen Colbert-fast.

  4. Keep working these phrases into you answers: “I like to work hard. I like to work long hours until it is done. I like to learn new things. I like to be around smart people I can learn from. I like figuring it out myself. Just give me the problem and I will solve it.” Standard stuff, but always works.

Your son picked a field where only the incompetent can’t succeed. And yet many of them still do. :wink: He’ll be fine!

14

Outside projects are a big plus. If an interviewee doesn’t have any outside project experience, then I would suggest he/she be prepared to talk in depth about school projects. Bonus points if you can discuss real world applications for that project…especially if those applications relate directly to the company that’s interviewing you.

The problem solving questions terrify a lot of introverts. Quiet thinkers are often the best thinkers and I suspect a lot of them get excluded from consideration because they shut down at this part of the interview. Learning how to respond to these questions is a vital tech job search skill.

15

My strategy at all of my interviews has been to listen and talk very little, only when asked. It has worked for me very well. I am on my job #9 - with CS degree and before that I was only at one engineering job. I switched from engineering to CS because I hate the engineering with all my heart. I never had any kind of problem solving questions.

When asked, my strategy has always been to remain very honest, even it seemed to be detrimental to my success at interview. Surprisingly, it never was even when I truthfully acknowledged that not only I have no idea what the name of the position meant, I also have no experience connected to it. This specific interview resulted with the offer that was a great increase from my previous job.

It is helpful to look up the company information on the internet. Do not spend a lot of time on it though.
There is a funny story is about being hired to my current position, which I have been holding for the past 10 years and which is absolutely the best job that I have ever had. I was invited to consequent interview after my initial interview was on the phone. And later I realized that I thought during my telephone interview that I was talking to somebody totally different. As usual, I applied to several companies for the same position and misunderstood the name over the phone. You see how the strategy of revealing as little as possible worked very well in this occasion. Do not volunteer any information, unless you are specifically asked. Being introverted is a definite help with this strategy. I basically had to force myself to “byte my tongue” so to speak.

16

@ailinsh1 @ucbalumnus

Wow. I am really, really grateful for the thought and time that all of you put into writing down ideas for me.

I have reread each of your posts at least three times and want to figure out the best way to tactfully share some of this wisdom and advice with my son. He will likely listen better to a real live engineer/computer scientists vs. me, so hopefully I can try to make that happen too (and/or he will find good mentors at college). I am going to cut & paste all of this into a single document for easy reference.

Some of you seemed to know my son or have a clone of him in your family! @mathmom Your t-shirt idea is hilarious and spot-on! @furrydog Your daughter sounds so similar too. Except your story about her knowing no one in her college classes does make me worry I had hoped that college might be good socially for my son (like mathmom’s older son at CMU) , because he will be surrounded hopefully by more kids with similar interests than in HS.

@ailinsh1 Great all-around advice!

@beerme I am concerned that we have not done enough to prepare him for the big world, but then sometimes I feel like we did as much as he would allow us to. We exposed him to as many opportunities as our other son, but this second one was often more resistant and reluctant at times to try new things.

@HappyAlumnus I think you are right about the ISTJ. I read a book last summer entitled , “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking” to try to better understand your/his 13% of the population! I do recommend it! Thank you for your encouragement and that of @happy1 and @Dustyfeathers

@NeoDymium I tried once to take my son to a psychiatrist in middle school, just to have them talk together to see what the doctor thought. But, somehow, the concept of simply talking to a doctor about himself either totally scared or just repulsed my son, and he absolutely refused to go. After threats and bribes, I could not physically make him get in the car, because he was 12 and too big. So, I went to the $285/hour appointment myself, since I was going to be charged even if we didn’t go, because we hadn’t canceled within 24 hours. I described my son t the doc as best I could. The doc obviously could not draw any conclusions without meeting him, but he doc said that son could have “mild Asperger’s.” When I asked what you do about that, he said usually nothing medically. And, since son was not willing to talk, we didn’t pursue spending money on counselors either. We just tried to keep him engaged in activities and ingratiate his teachers so that they would seek out his strengths despite his quiet nature - and hope for the best.

@Otterma @Postmodern @oldfort @ExamMasters Learning from you about what you look for in techie applicants and interviews was very helpful. Do you think there are differences between how a company might interview a computer engineering student versus a computer scientist? Or would the overall process be pretty similar for both? He will be deciding this year which direction he wants to take for his major.

@MiamiDAP Your post is pretty funny, but the advice about being a good listener and researching companies prior to an interview is important.

@ucbalumnus Interesting comment about for-profit company internships being paid. I do think a number of kids are now taking internships for free just to get experience on their resumes??

Thank you all again! I recognized some of your names from other threads for sure. After five years on and off of this CC site, I think this is the first thread I ever started. Now I have two, but they are related. I am really glad I had the courage to ask my questions.

17

@MOMANDBOYSTWO,

Well, I read the description of your second son and saw my… D.

Seriously, my D is just like that. She is very quiet and introverted. Even now, she spends most of her “free” time reading or working on the computer just by herself. She didn’t have many friends before college and now (second years in PhD program), I can count the number of her friends with the fingers of one hand. She also has “mild Asperger’s.”

When working on college applications, she, an excellent writer (taking AP English when she was 12) agonized over essay prompts such as “share your story” or “recount an incident or time when you experienced…” because she doesn’t want to talk about herself. Twice (at 12 and at 13 years old), she won “State Highest Scores” award and was invited to the Grand Ceremony at Johns Hopkins University but didn’t want to attend (“What for? Just a waste of time.”).

She was a CS major at CoE UC Berkeley, “a larger, competitive school for computer engineering/comp sci, where there will be lots of smart, ambitious kids.”

As an undergrad, she didn’t like classes requiring “team project.” Whenever possible, she’d rather work as a team of one (herself) instead of a team of multiple students. For graduations, she bought the grown and cap to take a few photos mainly with and for family members, but didn’t attend the commencement ceremony.

If my D’s case is any indication, I think you should put your fears to rest.

My D doesn’t like to socialize, and is not very popular with many of her classmates. Most of them know her as a “smart girl” but not much more than that. The thing is, she gets along well with people of similar interests. The very first summer after she entered UCB, a postdoc asked her to joint in a research he started but didn’t have much time to continue by himself; an MIT professor later joined the team. They recently published the paper, and the team nominated her to be the presenter at the conference.

The PI of the lab, and another professor somewhat related to the research (but not the PI), wrote wonderful LoRs for her PhD applications. The latter accepted her as one of his PhD student advisees. She is very enthusiastic about what she is doing and gets along well with her small group of PhD students.

She also taught some undergard classes at UCB and students seemed to like her.

My only suggestion to your second son: try to improve his soft skills, not for anyone else but himself: learn how to manage time, learn how to read people, pay more attention to the environment, especially clues given out (unconsciously) by other people. But when it comes to personality, I don’t think he should change a thing.

And you @MOMANDBOYSTWO, as a parent, don’t worry about a thing. He’ll do fine.

18

Depending on the school, computer engineering may have a somewhat greater hardware emphasis than computer science. To the extent that this matters, it may affect what kind of jobs students and graduates in each major seek (e.g. students in computer engineering may be more interested in hardware and therefore apply to jobs with a greater emphasis on hardware).

19

We call my STEM D “The Cat Behind the Couch” due to her introversion. Your S might be able to get a research position on campus summer after freshman year, suggest that he ask his CS profs about it in the fall, maybe after Thanksgiving. It can be a good stepping stone to build some skills to parlay into an internship later on. My D has definitely gained confidence in college, and does better at talking with STEM people now than when she started.

20

You can start doing research as early as the summer before freshman year, although you would certainly need a professor who is interested in mentoring you since you won’t be productive until at least a few years later.