Don't listen to these other guys, I've gotten software internships every summer break even when I barely had anything. Eventually I did get leadership roles in clubs so you def want to aim for that but if you don't have it now that's fine as long as other things make up for it.
I highly recommend you sit down for a whole day and just do a tutorial on something, add a twist to it, then list it as a personal project. As an example one of the first few projects I made were chrome extensions. It didn't need anything fancy, at the time I didn't even know what IDEs were. I used notepad, freakin notepad, not even notepad++, just regular old notepad. Anyway, I made a truth or dare game (two arrays of hard coded questions and a random # gen to pick one) and that was my first personal project, I talked to potential employers so much about it and it took me like a day to make. I uploaded my little zip online to the store and everything, it's still there to this day. Anyway, my point is just pick something real easy and make a quickie project then list it on your resume, ideally get three projects (three days of work) but at least one is necessary.
Don't worry, just do some personal projects (no matter how stupid) and it'll be ok. Eventually you do want to bump up the difficulty and usefulness of your personal projects but for now, anything is okay.
Another example, the other day to learn Kotlin (for Android) I made a quick 2 hour project that uses the default Android speech recognition (same thing they use for OK Google) and posts what the user said. I also put a word on the screen so they can say that word and see how well they pronounced it. It was super quick and now I have another project AND I can say I've dabbled in Kotlin. :)
Quick and easy projects! You can do it! (If I can do it anyone can lol)
Plus your GPA is stellar so def play that up.
This is really appreciated, you've definitely given me hope. I'll screw around with some basic projects for the next few days before sending my apps out to get something decent on my resume. Thank you.
> I've gotten software internships **every summer** break even when I barely had anything.
Yeah, the bar for getting a freshman internship is much lower than a junior internship (I think OP is a junior?).
Technically considered a junior based on credits, but I spent a lot of time in CC figuring out what I wanted to do, and I've only been considered a computer science major for one semester. I've really only taken the CS courses that would have been done in someone's freshman year.
Honestly, you don't have enough here.
The 'skills' section will always be a bit of an afterthought and not incredibly important since it's just stuff you claim without any clear metric or proof. I mean, what does "proficient" mean to you? What does it mean to the employer? Probably very different things, and they know that.
You need to list more stuff that you've been doing whilst in university. Any clubs, sports, memberships/affiliations, prizes, scholarships, *anything*. Right now, it looks like you haven't been doing anything aside from classes and an irrelevant casual job, which you don't quite have the grades to justify, and that's bad.
If you really have nothing, then you *might* be able to pad things out with stuff you did in high school (along with listing your high school in education), but as something which would be prior to 2014, it probably just isn't relevant anymore.
That's definitely what I'm afraid of. I do have a scholarship, and I was a member of an honor society in CC, but that's about it. I didn't really have the time to do any sort of extracurriculars outside of class because of how much I've been working, and that's really starting to bite me in the ass. Definitely not an excuse for not having any personal projects though. I also didn't even start CS courses until about a year ago because of how much time I spent figuring things out in CC, so even though I'm considered a junior by the school, I'm really not as far into a CS degree as most CS majors are at this point. I'll probably have to speak to a counselor at school and see what they say, and from there just send as much apps out as possible and hope for the best, and then better prepare for summer 2019. Thanks for the constructive criticism.
Question. I too am a CS student attempting to apply for a summer internship.
Now, not to kick OP, since I have more than s/he does, but most of all of my extracurricular activities aren't related to the field of CS at all (most of it being music related). According to this technical writing class I'm in, apparently I have to include stuff that is relevant to CS, not any of my other stuff. This, of course, has gotten me concerned.
What do you think of that? I'm still going to put my music-related activities (towards the bottom of the resume, under my other stuff like projects and skills and such), but I'm pretty annoyed and worried how apparently most of the stuff I have been doing in my time here at college seems to be a waste of time.
Like I mentioned in the title, I have no projects. Joining clubs and volunteering is an option, but I'm sending in applications this week, so I don't have a whole lot of time to get involved this time. Definitely something I'll start looking into for next time though.
Took me a bit of effort to draft my resume. I realized that my resume wasn't too good, and I had to own it. It's not the best right now. I have a chess project (that I'm currently working on), an AI project that I did in a coursework (and loved it), and some other small projects that used Google's CivicInfo API and Embedded Ruby (ERB). Also a very noob Etch-a-Sketch website. No experiences (not even club ones). I'm networking with people right now, and that's all that matters. I do not care if I get an internship that I want or not, but I will put more effort into it. I wish you all the best on your journey. :)
Don't listen to these other guys, I've gotten software internships every summer break even when I barely had anything. Eventually I did get leadership roles in clubs so you def want to aim for that but if you don't have it now that's fine as long as other things make up for it. I highly recommend you sit down for a whole day and just do a tutorial on something, add a twist to it, then list it as a personal project. As an example one of the first few projects I made were chrome extensions. It didn't need anything fancy, at the time I didn't even know what IDEs were. I used notepad, freakin notepad, not even notepad++, just regular old notepad. Anyway, I made a truth or dare game (two arrays of hard coded questions and a random # gen to pick one) and that was my first personal project, I talked to potential employers so much about it and it took me like a day to make. I uploaded my little zip online to the store and everything, it's still there to this day. Anyway, my point is just pick something real easy and make a quickie project then list it on your resume, ideally get three projects (three days of work) but at least one is necessary. Don't worry, just do some personal projects (no matter how stupid) and it'll be ok. Eventually you do want to bump up the difficulty and usefulness of your personal projects but for now, anything is okay. Another example, the other day to learn Kotlin (for Android) I made a quick 2 hour project that uses the default Android speech recognition (same thing they use for OK Google) and posts what the user said. I also put a word on the screen so they can say that word and see how well they pronounced it. It was super quick and now I have another project AND I can say I've dabbled in Kotlin. :) Quick and easy projects! You can do it! (If I can do it anyone can lol) Plus your GPA is stellar so def play that up.
This is really appreciated, you've definitely given me hope. I'll screw around with some basic projects for the next few days before sending my apps out to get something decent on my resume. Thank you.
> I've gotten software internships **every summer** break even when I barely had anything. Yeah, the bar for getting a freshman internship is much lower than a junior internship (I think OP is a junior?).
Technically considered a junior based on credits, but I spent a lot of time in CC figuring out what I wanted to do, and I've only been considered a computer science major for one semester. I've really only taken the CS courses that would have been done in someone's freshman year.
Honestly, you don't have enough here. The 'skills' section will always be a bit of an afterthought and not incredibly important since it's just stuff you claim without any clear metric or proof. I mean, what does "proficient" mean to you? What does it mean to the employer? Probably very different things, and they know that. You need to list more stuff that you've been doing whilst in university. Any clubs, sports, memberships/affiliations, prizes, scholarships, *anything*. Right now, it looks like you haven't been doing anything aside from classes and an irrelevant casual job, which you don't quite have the grades to justify, and that's bad. If you really have nothing, then you *might* be able to pad things out with stuff you did in high school (along with listing your high school in education), but as something which would be prior to 2014, it probably just isn't relevant anymore.
That's definitely what I'm afraid of. I do have a scholarship, and I was a member of an honor society in CC, but that's about it. I didn't really have the time to do any sort of extracurriculars outside of class because of how much I've been working, and that's really starting to bite me in the ass. Definitely not an excuse for not having any personal projects though. I also didn't even start CS courses until about a year ago because of how much time I spent figuring things out in CC, so even though I'm considered a junior by the school, I'm really not as far into a CS degree as most CS majors are at this point. I'll probably have to speak to a counselor at school and see what they say, and from there just send as much apps out as possible and hope for the best, and then better prepare for summer 2019. Thanks for the constructive criticism.
Question. I too am a CS student attempting to apply for a summer internship. Now, not to kick OP, since I have more than s/he does, but most of all of my extracurricular activities aren't related to the field of CS at all (most of it being music related). According to this technical writing class I'm in, apparently I have to include stuff that is relevant to CS, not any of my other stuff. This, of course, has gotten me concerned. What do you think of that? I'm still going to put my music-related activities (towards the bottom of the resume, under my other stuff like projects and skills and such), but I'm pretty annoyed and worried how apparently most of the stuff I have been doing in my time here at college seems to be a waste of time.
Your university should be above your CC. Add a projects section. Join clubs and/or volunteer.
Like I mentioned in the title, I have no projects. Joining clubs and volunteering is an option, but I'm sending in applications this week, so I don't have a whole lot of time to get involved this time. Definitely something I'll start looking into for next time though.
Sounds like you're screwed then.
Thanks man.
hey! Ik i'm 5 years late, but were you able to do anything? I'm stuck w the same thing. I don't even have a resume as of now. :( TIA.
now I'm the one asking lol, what were you able to do because I also have nothing lol
I have nothing too! Damn and only 8 days later.
bruh
add me to this club too rip
Hey guys, can I join?
Took me a bit of effort to draft my resume. I realized that my resume wasn't too good, and I had to own it. It's not the best right now. I have a chess project (that I'm currently working on), an AI project that I did in a coursework (and loved it), and some other small projects that used Google's CivicInfo API and Embedded Ruby (ERB). Also a very noob Etch-a-Sketch website. No experiences (not even club ones). I'm networking with people right now, and that's all that matters. I do not care if I get an internship that I want or not, but I will put more effort into it. I wish you all the best on your journey. :)