How to Find High School Computer Science Internships

It’s the numbers game in this current job market - How many internships did you apply for? - How many people have you texted for referrals? - How many people did you network with? - How many career fairs have you attended? - How many networking events did you go for? - How many Interviews you gave, total rejections? Candidates with excellent skills are not getting Interviews because they aren’t applying. Candidates with decent skills are getting 10s of Interviews because they applied to 500+ opportunities. Students who are splitting their focus equally on upskilling and creating opportunities are winning. Do this: [1] Build a Portfolio Early (Not in Your Last Semester) - 2-3 solid projects. - Real users, real scale, real GitHub activity [2] Leetcode? Yes. But System Design Too. - 150 well-understood Leetcode problems are enough - Practice explaining trade-offs [3] Use LinkedIn the Right Way - Comment on posts by engineers in companies you want to join - Post twice a week: what you’re building, learning, or struggling with - DM people who’ve walked your path — ask for guidance, not referrals [4] Start Applying Before Everyone Else - July–September is gold for Summer internships - Don’t wait till October when everyone panics and spams [5] Attend Meetups and Hackathons - In-person > online - Build a real network, not just LinkedIn connections [6] Don't Just "Go With The Flow" - Pick a specialization: Backend? ML? Data? Frontend? - Go deep. Become known for it. Attract opportunities [7] Get Comfortable Talking About Yourself - Practice answering: → “Tell me about yourself” → “What did you build and why?” → “What do you want to work on?” You can’t get hired if you can’t sell yourself. Follow @Suresh

Everyone has been asking me how to get offers at companies like Dell & Tesla I don't go to a top 500 school. I'm an immigrant, so I don’t have uncles at these companies. But I still landed internships at Dell and Tesla, here's how: 1. Hustle, Hustle, Hustle - When I was a freshman, I did everything on campus. Joined every organization, went to every career event, signed up for LinkedIn, Handshake, and even some random platforms my school pushed. This helped to get the attention of professors and faculty. So when a national competition came up (HBCU Battle of the Brains), they nominated me to represent the school. We ended up placing 2nd nationwide, Dell was a sponsor, and a recruiter passed my resume to a hiring manager. That’s how I got the internship. 2. Projects - Do interesting stuff. I'm CEO of Sorce, so I’ve seen thousands of resumes. Everyone has a LangChain chatbot now - that won’t make you stand out. My Tesla manager said the only reason he interviewed me was because of a side project: a tool for detecting AI-generated text right after ChatGPT launched. Do projects that you care about and is interesting. Even better, work on something that's useful and people use. 3. Conferences - Go to conferences and hustle. I got the Tesla internship by handing my resume to a Tesla recruiter at AFROTECH - simple as that. I didn’t even think I was going to be a top candidate, but I shot my shot. Attend every conference you can. Sneak in if you have to. No shame in trying. 4. Numbers - Don't forget the numbers game. Every new application you send is a new shot at goal and increases your odds of getting the internship. It's a marathon. So keep applying for roles, keep connecting with people on linkedin and keep editing your resume. This is also why we built https://lnkd.in/etr6msZG, it's basically AI to help you apply for jobs faster. If there's any other tip I might have missed, please add it in the comments! If you liked this, repost.