Engineering Internship Success Stories To Inspire You

The intern who beat 200+ applicants wasn't the strongest coder -- Yesterday, we hired Maya for our engineering internship. She wasn't the best programmer. 3 had better GPAs. 5 had bigger projects. 12 came from target schools. But Maya did something no one else tried. What Maya Did While others sent generic cover letters, Maya: Spent 2 hours analyzing our product Found 3 bugs in our user flow Sent detailed fixes with screenshots Subject line: "Found issues that might help BookingFlow conversion" I forwarded it to our team in 10 minutes. She skipped resume screening entirely. Why This Works Most think: "Impress them with my background" Maya thought: "Add value before we meet" 3 hours of research > 30 generic applications. The Pattern I See Hired interns solve problems first: ✅ Designer created wireframes for company's checkout ✅ Marketer sent competitor analysis + content ideas ✅ Data person built dashboard of company's public metrics The Catch Only works if you genuinely care about the company. Fake research shows. Real curiosity doesn't. My Advice Stop mass-applying. Pick 5 companies you actually want to work for. Understand their challenges. Show up with solutions. Scarier than "Easy Apply." 10x higher success rate. Students: Ever tried "solve first, apply second"? Recruiters: Most memorable application you've received? #hiring #internships #recruiting #standout

I landed 2 internships with zero experience in data. Not by applying. But by learning how to network — one conversation at a time. 📌 If you’re not at from an Ivy college, 80% of companies at your career fair won’t sponsor. That’s not unfair — That’s just how it works. 👉 Your job is to find the 20% that do. I focused only on that 20% at two career fairs. And I walked away with two internships. 📍 How I Started With Zero Network Just arrived from India. No U.S. experience. No connections. No idea how hiring worked. But I was extroverted. And I genuinely cared about people’s stories. So I started with what I had: → Friends from undergrad in the U.S. → Family friends in any industry → My cousin (data scientist in Australia) → Anyone who could connect me to a sponsor-ready company 💬 My cousin gave me advice I’ll never forget: "Stop building Titanic survival analyses. No one cares. Build projects that show how you think like a business person — not just a coder." So I picked real problems from real industries. And I focused on insights that could help teams make actual decisions. My 3-Step Networking Process: ✅ Step 1: Start with warm contacts I listed 15 people I already knew. And booked as many calls as I could. 🎯 One day in class, I gave a thoughtful answer. My professor, Jason Cirilo, said: "That’s a great take. Let me introduce you to someone in the industry." He connected me to Rakshit Goyal! That one intro taught me more than any textbook would. Now he shares great job search content on LinkedIn — go follow him. ✅ Step 2: Attend everything — even irrelevant events I went to every event on campus. Not because they were useful. But because I needed reps. Every awkward conversation made me better. I stopped rambling. I started asking better questions. ✅ Step 3: Use LinkedIn — but do it right → Engage with someone’s posts for 3–4 days → Send a connection request with context → Follow up after they accept with a good question 📬 The Realities of Outreach → 20% response rate is normal → Follow up after 5 days → If no reply after 2 follow-ups, move on — no emotion You don’t need a perfect resume. You need 100 real conversations. Start before you need the job. Because by then, it’s already too late. 👇 What’s your biggest challenge with networking as an international student? Drop it below — I’ll reply to a few directly. 📸 One of the proudest moments from this journey and a bucket list moment: Having my family visit me at American Airlines HQ. They saw where I work. I saw what it meant to them. #InternationalStudents #NetworkingTips #CareerFair #JobSearchStrategy #F1Visa #NetworkingForStudents #CareerAdvice #InternshipSearch #LinkedInNetworking #GradSchoolLife #PersonalBranding

A mentee of mine applied to 200+ software engineering internships in the last 3 months – here’s what you can learn from his experience  (He’s a master’s student in the USA, has strong skills, and I’ve been checking in with him every 2 weeks via text and calls.) 1️⃣ The numbers are brutal, but persistence matters   - He applied to 241 internships in 3 months.   - 117 companies ghosted him (no response at all).   - 88 companies rejected him outright after reviewing his application.   - Only 22 companies invited him for online assessments (OAs). - From those, he got 9 interviews and 2 job offers (Amazon + Autodesk). 💡 Lesson: It’s a numbers game. You will get rejected, a lot. But one offer is all you need. 2️⃣ The first 48 hours matter when applying - Some big-name companies closed applications within 48 hours of posting.   - The best way to stay ahead? Apply early and daily. - He used:   ○ GitHub repo: “Summer 2025 Tech Internships” (https://lnkd.in/gswGcUrG)   ○ Simplify.jobs – Job tracking and autofill applications ○ Swelist.com – Daily job postings sent via email 💡 Lesson: The earlier you apply, the better your chances. Set job alerts and apply as soon as listings go live.  3️⃣ Online assessments are a major filter   - Every OA took at least 1 hour.   - He failed 5 OAs outright but passed many others, only to get rejected later.   - The most frustrating experience? Getting a perfect OA score and still being rejected.  💡 Lesson: OAs are just the first step. Even if you ace them, companies may still reject you for other reasons (resume filtering, bad interviews, fit, etc.).  4️⃣ Interview preparation: go beyond Leetcode   - He spent 6+ hours in a library for 5-6 days before his Amazon final round.   - He used:     ○ Neetcode.io – A roadmap for coding interviews     ○ Leetcode cheat sheets – Writing down solutions & color-coding them based on difficulty     ○ https://lnkd.in/gY2pNcr8 – Filtering problems by company to study past questions  💡 Lesson: Don’t just solve problems: write down learnings, reinforce them, and study company-specific patterns. 5️⃣ Networking makes a difference - His first offer (Autodesk) came through a career fair, not an online application. - He had a great conversation with a recruiter, and they later reached out on LinkedIn to interview him. - One conversation led to a job offer. 💡 Lesson: Online applications aren’t enough, go to career fairs, reach out to recruiters, hiring managers and ask for referrals. 6️⃣ Rejections feel bad, but the outcome is worth it   - 200+ applications, 2 offers. That’s a 1% success rate.   - But he’s now interning at Amazon with a total comp of ~$55/hr this summer. 💡 Lesson: It only takes one “yes” to change everything. Keep going.  If you’re applying for internships/jobs right now, I know how exhausting it is. Rejections suck. Ghosting sucks. But stay consistent, use the right strategies, and don’t give up too soon.

Compbio Internship Search Success Story Way back in February of this year I published an article explaining how the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) funds a Data Science Internship Program that basically provides free money for small biotechs to pay for compbio interns. I cannot over-emphasize how awesome this program is. I gave this piece of advice in the article on how students can participate in this program: “Current students or recent graduates in Massachusetts who want to work as computational biologists should upload their resumes to the MLSC portal. As you reach out to small biotech companies for internships, do your best to let them know about the MLSC funding available to them; they may not know otherwise. If they like you and want to access this funding, they should find your resume on the MLSC portal and request to hire you through the MLSC Data Science Internship Program.” A proactive computer science master’s student - we’ll call him Vic - actually read my article in detail and took action. He used LinkedIn to find computational biologists in small Massachusetts biotechs and cold-messaged them, explaining how there is free money available to them to pay for interns, and asked if they’d be interested in taking him on as a summer intern. About one-third to one-half of the people he cold-messaged responded, in part because they didn’t know about this internship funding and wanted to see how they can make it work. As we all know, that is a high response rate as far as cold messages go. Most of them did not have plans to take on a summer intern. But one of them enjoyed speaking with Vic so much that they created an internship for him. And they did this even without using the MLSC funding. Success! Vic did everything right. He executed the exact actions I had in mind when writing that article. Moral of the story? Turns out not all my articles are crap. Take action and follow through like Vic. You just might get an internship out of it. #compbio #computationalbiology #bioinformatics