Context#

You’re a student or recent grad, and you’re seeking your first internship or full-time job in North American tech.

Maybe you don’t know where to even start looking, how to apply efficiently, how to network, or how to pass interviews.

This guide is for you.

🧮 What you should expect#

Apply to every job that you meet at least half the requirements for. Don’t self-select out of opportunities - that’s the recruiter’s job. Often times, the list of requirements is more like a Christmas wishlist than actual job requirements.

After every ~50-100 applications you submit, note how many invitations to interview you received. Ideally, aim for a 2-10% interview rate - if you’re below 2%, it’s time to revisit your strategy and/or resume ↓.

The most important and underrated tip is to apply the first day a job opens. Do not wait 24 hours to update your resume, do not wait 3 days for your friend to maybe refer you, just apply. Seriously. Often times, recruiters will send a first wave of interview within 24 hours of the job being posted, and it’s highly possible that they will hire someone from that batch.

Also be aware of traditional tech recruiting timelines - for Summer 2025 roles, start applying as early as Summer 2024. Many students already have their new grad jobs or internships lined up by October of the previous year.

🗞️ Job boards to check every day#

1. Simplify has a great matching algorithm (if you fill out your profile properly)
2. JobPulse.fyi is also pretty good and community-sourced
3. LinkedIn - paste this in the search bar and create a job alert for it:

   ("software" OR "engineer" OR "developer") AND ("graduate" OR "new grad" OR "2025" OR "university" OR "early career" OR "internship" OR "co-op")
   

4. GitHub internship repositories like Pitt CSC
5. Careers page of your favourite companies

⏰ Each job application should take you no more than 1 minute (unless there’s essay questions). Use the Simplify Chrome extension ↗ to auto-fill them.

Simplify Chrome extension is a lifesaver

Submitting an application#

🖨️ Resumes#

There are already a gazillion resources online about how to write an early career tech resume - some better than others. The general consensus for early career big tech roles is:

• 1 page long. No exceptions. Seriously.
• No pictures of yourself, home address, or references.
• No crazy formatting that is hard to read or not ATS-parseable.
• Education first, with your expected graduation month and year.
  • Recruiters check this first to decide if you’re eligible for internships or new grad roles.
• Numbers that quantify your impact.
  • See this article for examples.
• PDF format. No .docx please.

🧠 These guidelines are directly aligned with how recruiters read your resume ↓, which is the most important goal to keep in mind:

The only purpose of a resume is to get you an interview. - Ace the Data Science Interview

That being said, resumes are not one-size-fits-all and should be thought of as a work-in-progress - you will want to get resume reviews ↓ occasionally.

☝️ Particularly, if you’re applying for multiple different roles, you should have a version of your resume for each role - for example, one for SWE roles, one for Machine Learning roles, and one for Product Management roles.

🖌️ What template should I use?
It doesn’t matter a ton - keep it simple and easy to read. You can use this very popular LaTeX SWE resume template ↗, or try out free online tools like flowcv.io.

💌 Cover letters#

Most people don’t submit them. They take up a lot of mental energy. Some employers appreciate them. Many employers don’t even read them.

Maybe it’s best to save them for companies/roles you’re really, really passionate about and a really, really good fit for.

If you choose to write a cover letter:

• Do not use AI. It’s obvious. Even if you edit it.
• Do not just re-write your resume in paragraph form. There is no value added from this.

See this PostHog article ↗ to get an idea of what makes a good vs. bad cover letter.

PostHog writers share a lot of useful insights about the hiring process

🎨 Portfolios#

They are not super necessary, and most recruiters or hiring managers will never even see it. If you insist on having one, make sure it looks good:

1. Use a ready-made portfolio theme. Unless you’re already a web design pro, templates are probably better-looking than anything you can make on your own as a beginner.
2. Showcase high-quality projects. You want people to be blown away by the quality of your work, not underwhelmed.
3. Include GitHub links. Also make sure your README’s are well-written and include a GIF of a quick demo.

Don’t spend too much time on the portfolio website itself - what really matters is the quality of the projects that are showcased.

📣 Pro tip: If you build someting really cool, talk about it on LinkedIn or other platforms - this is a great way to get some exposure and meet interesting people.

Networking and socializing#

Understand your recruiters#

There is a famous 2018 study ↗ by Ladders Inc, a job search platform, in which they used eye tracking to understand how recruiters parse your resume.

🪖 Key takeaways from Ladders Inc’s study:

• Recruiters spend 7.4 seconds on average reading a resume.
• Top-performing resumes had simple F- or E-shaped layouts, clear sections with appropriately bolded and bulletted text, and a detailed “Objective” or “Summary” section at the top.
• Worst-performing resumes had cluttered layouts with long sentences, multiple columns, lack of sections or headers, and too many keywords.

⏰ This means that you should structure your resume with the idea that your recruiter will only spend 7 seconds scanning the top left corner of it - so that’s where your most striking information should be.

You can also check out these articles by PostHog which offer very insightful information on recruiter perspectives:

• What startup recruiters actually see when you apply for a job
• How to get a job at a startup

💭 To better understand the psychology of reading a resume, see this LinkedIn article ↗ by Lee Woodrow.

Recruiters read resumes in an F-shaped pattern

💼 Go to career fairs#

If you consistently try to make the most out of career fairs, at worst you’ll end up with a large LinkedIn network of peers and friends to commiserate with - at best, you’ll get a job offer at the event itself.

Here is everything you should try to do at a career fair:

• Submit your resume to their database (if they have one) so recruiters can find it in searches
• Fill out every interest form or email list you can find. After the event, companies will email you special priority links to apply to their jobs
• Be interview-ready - this can happen on the spot at certain events
• Talk to at least 3 people who are not company-affiliated - basically try to make some friends
• Send a LinkedIn invite to everyone you had an actual conversation with (and include a note)

🚨 Popular tech career fairs#

• Greylock Techfair - a selective SF-based virtual career fair that hosts startups from Greylock’s portfolio
• RTC Virtual Career Summit - a virtual career fair for women+ who are members of RTC
• LWT Career Summit - a virtual and in-person career fair for LWT members (allies and other LGBTQ+ members are welcome)
• Out in Tech Career Talks - a virtual career fair for Out in Tech members (allies and other LGBTQ+ members are welcome)
• Grace Hopper Conference - a virtual and in-person conference plus career fair for women+.
• Hack the North’s sponsors expo
• CodePath’s virtual summit for CodePath students and alumni

💸 Can’t afford to attend?
If tickets to an event (cough, cough Grace Hopper) are expensive, please do not pay out of pocket. Instead, contact your university department, CS club, or employer and ask them to sponsor you to attend the event. Here is a guide about this ↗, written by the Grace Hopper Conference.

🔎 Get resume feedback#

Building your resume is an ongoing process - you should be updating it every few months, or every milestone you reach. Getting a fresh pair of eyes on your resume is very helpful - try to:

• Attend Resume Review events. These events will sometimes have industry recruiters who can give you key feedback, and you get to connect with them as a bonus. Rewriting the Code is an example organization that hosts such events for women and underrepresented genders in tech.
• Ask your peers at your school’s CS club, women-in-tech groups like WiCS and RTC, or any other private groups.
• Use an ATS parser like Jobscan to make sure the keywords in your resume match the job description, and that your resume is formatted correctly.
• Post your (anonymized) resume online and ask for feedback.
  • See the resume review threads on r/cscareerquestions, r/resumes, r/csmajors, and Blind.
  • Make sure to remove your name and any combination of information that someone could use to find you on LinkedIn, for safety reasons.

u/unomsimpluboss has a lot of opinions on your resume

Try to get referrals#

Getting a referral for a job often means that at the very least you’re guaranteed that the recruiter will actually see your resume, and at best, you’ll get to skip the first 1 or 2 rounds of interviews.

🔥 Warm referrals#

The best kind of referrals you can get - these are referrals from people who know you well and can vouch for your skills and character. The more friends you have in your industry, the better your odds of getting a warm referral. To get there, you should:

• Meet a lot of people. Not recruiters or decision-makers - more like your classmates, hackathon teammates, club members, etc. Find out where they want to work, where they’ve worked in the past, and if they know anyone who works at your target companies.
• Be vocal about your goals. You want to be the first person that comes to mind when someone sees an opening at their company. If no one knows you want to be an [insert role] at [insert company], they can’t keep an eye out for you.
• Be reliable. You want people to feel confident that you’re a great candidate and will pass the interviews.

🧊 Cold referrals#

The bane of every early career professional’s existence - they can be awkward and difficult to get. This Reddit post ↗ swears by the formula below:

1. Send LinkedIn invites to anyone who is a 2nd or 3rd connection and has anything in common with you.
2. As soon as they accept, send them a message, no longer than 1 paragraph, asking for a referral.

📣 The suggested message template is something like:

Hey, my name is X, and I am messaging you because I am interested in a job at Y. These roles I have sent below seem like a great fit for me, and I would love if you could refer me. I am a new grad interested in ABC. I worked on ABC extensively in [my project/internship/other]. Thank you so much for everything, and have a great day!

Keep in mind that most people will probably ignore your message or maybe even decline to refer you - that is perfectly fine and does not reflect on either you or them. Just move on to the next person.

u/texzone has some strongly worded yet insightful advice about cold referrals

❌ What NOT to do#

• Do not pay for any career services.
  • Including resume review services, templates, or referrals. There are plenty of free resources available online.
• Do not blindly follow advice from people who have not recently been involved in recruitment for the specific roles you want.
  • This can include your university’s career services, your professors, your relatives, people who live in different continents or are pursuing a different field than you, etc.
  • For example, in Europe, it’s common to include a photo of yourself on your resume - this is a big no-no in North America.
• Don’t be disingenuous. People can often tell if you are being fake, and most don’t appreciate it.

Doing well in interviews#

So you’ve landed an interview - congratulations 🎉 ! Once again, there is no shortage of information online on how to do well in tech interviews - here is a quick summary:

• 👩🏻‍💻 For OAs and technical rounds, complete the Blind 75 on Neetcode and watch his explanation videos. If you’ve already completed those, practice solving the most common LeetCode problems your company uses.
• 🎥 For live coding interviews, practice explaining your thought process using mock interview platforms like Pramp, interviewing.io, or Headstarter.
• 🫱🏻‍🫲🏻 For behavioural rounds, make sure to practice answering questions using the STAR format (Situation, Task, Action, Result) and learn the company’s values and culture. Also make sure to prepare thoughtful questions to ask your interviewers about the role and company - never say that you have no questions to ask.

🔎 Prior to your interviews, gather as much information as possible by searching Glassdoor, Reddit, and Blind. Also ask your recruiter directly for more details on what to prepare and expect.

🩵 Whatever you do, do not underestimate the behavioural round - sometimes a hiring manager will prefer to hire someone who is not technically perfect but shows strong potential and eagerness to learn over someone who is technically apt but seems difficult to work with.

Regardless of the outcome of the interviews, try to display good character and keep a good relationship with your recruiter and interviewers - who knows, maybe in the future another role will open up and they will reach out to you again!

Pramp lets you practice live interviews with strangers, professionals, or your friends

Still can’t find a job?#

If all this advice still wasn’t enough to land you a job or internship, don’t panic - there are many other ways in which you can spend your time:

• Try to get alternative experience ↗ - like hackathons, open source, AI training, and a lot more.
• Build a high-quality project ↗ - and hey, maybe you can monetize it !
• Just vibe for a bit - maybe it’s time for a well-deserved vacation ?

🧀 Gouda luck :-)