How do I get a software internship?

I keep seeing flyers and listings for internships that look for qualifications I don't have (candidate should know language x,y, and z).There are definitely internships where you will be participating in building shipping products, and should know how to do that. But there are also internships that will help you learn. In general, you should apply for jobs that have requirements above your current abilities. Job descriptions describe the ideal candidate. Real candidates rarely match all the criteria. Is the issue that you haven't written much software at school, or you just don't care for Java and other corporate technologies? If the former, then you can fix it by doubling down on projects this year. If the latter, then you can look for companies that like the technologies that you know. For an internship, I would absolutely hire a hardcore Python developer even if my codebase was Java. You can pick up a new language easily, and chances are that you've had some exposure to the other languages. Other technologies like Oracle or the middleware of the day I wouldn't even expect a college kid to know. But don't lie about your experience. Embellish, but don't lie.When I read about things like interview questions online, I find that I would have trouble with them myself (maybe these are targeted towards other people?).Keep practicing. This might be a good time to think about taking a fifth year, or continuing on to a MS degree. You should come out of a CS program with solid coding skills, good knowledge of data structures and algorithms, and strong problem solving skills. If you feel you are weak, now is the time to fill in the gaps.I'm in this for the experience, not the money. I would even take an unpaid internship.Don't do that. CS internships are paid. If someone you don't know wants you to work for free, it is probably not a very legit project. If your friends are doing a startup, or your friends can vouch for a startup that isn't paying, that might be worth considering. But given your apparent lack of skills, you may be better off in a larger company before you do startups. Big companies will pay you.Am I overthinking what an internship is?Maybe. Microsoft, Google, Amazon and other top-tier companies will expect you to be involved in projects comparable to real projects, though usually self-contained enough that you can finish within your internship. Second and third tier companies will take what they can get and train you. Software engineers are in very high demand now, so you should be able to find something. The problem is that if you enter at a third-tier company, it is easy to get stuck there. Can you boost your skills to the point where Microsoft will hire you? Shoot for that.what clothes do I wear to a career fair?This is hugely location dependent. If you were on the west coast of the USA, I'd suggest wearing clothes. And shoes. Also, take a shower before showing up. Out east or elsewhere in the world slacks and a sports coat or even a full suit might be appropriate, particularly if you are targeting more traditional industries like finance. Talk to your fellow students, talk to the careers office at your school.

Hello! I'm a software engineer who does all of the initial screening for the people we hire at my company. I've read thousands of resumes and shook hands with hundreds and hundreds of potential applicants at job fairs. I don't really care about what you're wearing at the job fair. I also don't really care that you spent the summer as a lifeguard or worked at your local retail store, no matter how punctual you were. I only care about whether you can code and whether you can listen and follow directions. I will read your resume and and direct all of my interactions with you to figuring this out. First, if you have no programming job experience school, club and personal projects are huge. My favorite interviews (even just standing around at the career fair or over the phone) are ones where the applicant shows me a cool app that they've built or an online portfolio showing lots of mini-projects. I'm not talking about things that took thousands of lines of code, but things that took advantage of existing libraries, or are little programs that show some creative thinking. It's even okay if it's something that you built as part of a team, just as long as you can talk in depth about the parts you did. List all of the languages you know and all of the software packages you know right after your job and project experience. I screen for skills that are relevant to our business, like experience with javascript, python, map apis or charting packages. If they are not in one place I will probably not give you a good rating. However, even if you don't have everything I'm looking for, showing me a good demo or having extensive project experience listed lowers the bar for this screening considerably. If you're having trouble writing your resume please MeMail me and I can help you optimize what you've got. Oh, and we're hiring for spring and summer internships if you want to live in Pittsburgh for a few months!

Seconding alison and strongly disagreeing with Yowser. When taking interns, The best predictor is previous experience. I want to hear your interests, see your github and be convinced that you are interested in growing. I certainly care that interns "noodle around on trivial problems", because we all do when we're starting out. Feel free to memail me with specific questions, or to hear about some opportunities.

Ok, I'll comment. I'm a development manager, I hire software interns. First, I don't care a great deal about grades. (unless your GPA is awful < 2.5) The single most important thing you can do is to have a project on GitHub, or to contribute to an open source project. I can't emphasize this enough. If you have code on the web, I WILL pull it down and look at it. So make sure that your code is well formatted and commented (and works!). Yowser is absolutely incorrect here. Someone who has a project on GitHub and is attending community college is a rated higher than someone who attends a great school, but has no online portfolio. I also don't have a preference whether your project is contributing to open source, or just your version of Tetris. Alison mentioned listing skills, which is nice, but honestly, it's an intern position, I'm looking a lot more for intelligence than a skill with a particular language/tool. Most interns work on non-production code initially, so developer tools, non-essential projects, etc. Once we've identified that an intern is capable, they can start to work on production code. We will almost always make a job offer to interns who make this step. We assign our interns a mentor, a senior developer, who is the goto for any questions, that they might have. The mentor typically pairs with them 1-2 hours a day as well. I see some suggestions about wardrobe during the interview. I don't care if you're interviewing at Burger King, show up at the interview in at a minimum, business casual. Even if day to day life is casual, you only have that one chance.

Where do you go to school? This matters. Companies like to recruit at top-end schools, or schools that their employees came from. Go to recruiting events. The company I currently work for sends people to various schools (mostly higher tier ones) and collects resumes from interested parties. They ask people to submit a "coding challenge" which is essentially, "in any language you want, write code that returns the largest 5 numbers from an unsorted list in linear time." If you send in code at works, you will get a phone interview. If you get a phone interview, then you can get an in-person interview. What dose expect interns to do? Fix bugs, implement small features. They do real work, but not the hardest of the work. Often, things full time employees would find boring (this doesn't work in Internet explorer...)

I guess black is white and up is down in Ottawa. It wouldn't be the first time that's been said about Ottawa, but the tech implosion there after Nortel put 60k+ people in the streets has put a glut on the local market that doesn't exist in most other places.

I guess black is white and up is down in Ottawa.

There are a few reasons employers hire software development interns: * Cheap labor: This reason isn't going to rank high for a good tech company, because they generally know that getting useful, maintainable code out of summer interns is probably at least as expensive as just paying an more seasoned developer to write it. Less sophisticated companies, and companies who aren't developing code that will be used by millions, might make different calculations. * Talent Scouting/Development: Microsoft, Google, Facebook and others hire interns in the hopes of getting an early lead on talent. They'll learn far more about potential full-time employees over a summer internship than they will from a resume and a grueling interview loop. They also get a chance to shape their interns to their way of doing things, and increase their chances of hiring the interns once they graduate. That's what's in it for them. What's in it for you is exposure to the real-world practice of software development, an opportunity to refine existing skills and learn new ones, a chance to make connections with potential employers and mentors, and potentially, to network with other interns. That may seem like a lot of pressure, it may be, but it is nothing compared to the pressure you are likely to feel trying to get a job as a software engineer without having had an internship, the pressure you are likely to feel if your first introduction to real-world software development is at your first full-time job, the pressure you are likely to feel if you decide not to be a software engineer after being unable to find a job. I know, I know, I've just made things worse, but here is a secret: anything you do is the right thing, except, avoiding doing anything. The worst you can do is to get killed, and it is very very hard to get yourself killed applying for internships as a software developer. You'll do fine!

Don't waste your time on open source projects unless you're running them and have convinced others to help - no-one in the real world cares that you noodled around with some trivial problems, and you won't be making any coin, so what's the point. In case it's not obvious, this advice could not be more wrong. Most of the real world actually runs on open-source code or some derivative of it now, and a candidate who can show that they've shipped running code has a huge advantage over one who has no portfolio of their own to show off, as does a candidate who has demonstrated that they can learn enough about a large pre-existing codebase to contribute to it effectively.