Phew. Senior year starts in a few weeks. It has just dawned on me that this is my last internship. It’s only right that I share everything I have learned in how to best prepare for internship recruitment. I can recall all the frantic energy freshman year trying to prepare for technical interviews: stomaching the pit in my stomach opening up emails. Rejection, rejection, rejection. I swear I could not win for anything. But the good news is – I got an internship that year. And the year after that too. I started with AI Prompt Engineering as a freshman, moved to a DevOps Engineering internship as a sophomore, and am doing Cloud Security this year. It will all work out, just be intentional about how you approach this.
July is the best month to make a plan for your next internship quest. Starting at least one year in advance ensures that you have given yourself the best chance at landing something. Before we start to plan, I want you to imagine that whatever internship you are applying to has at least one hundred students all competing for the same seat at a company. These students all have similar GPA’s, tier schools, experiences, and courses completed. You can stop imagining now because its true. Now that you know that, what will make you stand out? Make it easy for companies to want to hire you.
A Fit for You
If I am not passionate about something, I am not doing it. Honestly speaking. Knowing this about myself helps me frame things that are good for me in a way that will inherently motivate me to accomplish them.
I urge you all to jump on opportunities that pique your interest or get you going. Even if you think it won’t be your final job type, it’s difficult, different, or not completely in line with your major. Freshman year and everything before is about doing some type of experience. After that, its refining a skillset to be impactful in a particular domain.
- What is your personality? → Seek jobs that feed well into that.
- What do you love doing? → Manipulating numbers, problem solving, programming, interacting with people.
- What could you keep doing for a long time? → If you had to come into the office everyday, is there something specifically that could make time go so fast. Something where your day is over, and there is still more that you are excited to do.
Technology is constantly evolving. If you are entering the field, expect that you will always need to be researching and understanding better ways of doing things. The success of your career will be dependent on that. Do not skip over knowing the “why” behind your approach.
Picking Quality Experiences
Make a list of all your accomplishments thus far.
- Clubs, personal projects, technical group memberships, initiatives started, research, case studies won, on-campus jobs, etc.
- Have an idea of what role you would be interested in working in:
- Engineering Intern
- Data Science Intern
- IT Security Intern
- Ask yourself: for [insert job role], which of my experiences show my baseline understanding of the subject and personal passion for doing the work? Ensure those are added to your resume and start there.
Think holistically! Try to do experiences that will help you be well rounded because soft skills matter. It can be enticing to obsess over big named companies. Target opportunities that can really grow you in different ways. Everything does not need to be writing code or for a well known name
I did a policy fellowship the summer of sophomore year with no experience in policy research. It was a doing what I am passionate about: using technology to actually improve circumstances. Those with disabilities were not benefitting from improperly configured web services and the local government was not compliant with ADA standards.
Things that the Paragon Policy Fellowship helped me with:
- Researching for a case study
- Finding the best technical implementation for organizations with limited resources
- Understanding that technology may be managed by people who have absolutely no idea about what is going on under the hood
- And how I can help them
- Communicating with a team of drastically different personalities and still accomplishing the end goal well
- Learning about ADA compliance
I wrote absolutely no code, but this experience was still so important to my overall perspective.
Reverse Engineer: Job Applications
We are going to start this guidebook looking at where we want to be. Most importantly, what it takes to get there. The whole idea of reverse engineering an application came from an industry professional in a YouTube video I came across. I used it to build out actual steps. These worked for me in landing my most recent roles!
For all intents and purposes, I figured it would be best to actively demonstrate what reverse engineering applications looks like.
Internship, Red Team Security Engineer, Vehicle Software (Fall 2025)
Steps
1
Check if you match their target audience and experience level.
Knowing the scope of the programs you are applying to is important. Freshman year, I was applying to programs with target graduation dates of juniors at the time. I spent time applying to those programs thinking “maybe they will still like my work” which is definitely possible. Though, it would have been a more effective use of my time to target 1st year programs/startups only. This program seems to be targeting those in their final year. Perhaps because it is a role that will be up for full time conversion.
2
Read the job description to understand exactly what skills and traits they want.
The job description itself is a clue of what they are looking for in the ideal candidate. It is your job to show that you have these traits in action through the experiences in your resume.
3
Research the company type and culture to understand what they specifically value.
Knowing what type of company you are aiming for is important. Is it big tech, startups, finance, or some other niche? Research what process usually takes place for those types of companies and prepare accordingly. Then get granular.
So in this example, Tesla is a car company. Aside from their technical company criteria – they probably want someone who is not only interested in hacking but also cars. Or data! Or has a proven record of hacking car components to get data. This description screams: curious “hack it” mindset person, car enthusiast, well spoken, technical, proven experience breaking things, and types of languages. Some of these things you can showcase in non-technical ways. Get creative with how you tailor your experiences, don’t discredit any of the work you have done even if it may not seem so important.
4
Gain and identify which of your experiences demonstrate the skills they’re looking for.
You can demonstrate through actual jobs (help desks in your school’s IT department, research, etc.) and also through personal projects. Use all available resources to help you brainstorm the types of personal projects you are working on. Here is how you can use AI.
6
Tailor your resume to highlight those specific experiences that match their requirements.
To the point where anyone can pick up your resume and the particular job description and say to themselves, “I see how this person has demonstrated the ability to handle this particular skill well.”
Prep Time
1 Year
Sprint time
3 Month Intervals
My preference is to structure my life in engineering sprints. Instead of weeks like agile, these internship sprints are months long with concrete objectives.
Sprint 1: July – September
- Refine your baseline resume
- Create a spreadsheet of applications that interest you
- Update your resume with more reflective experiences for each specific role
- Contact alumni – if you’re curious about an industry or unsure whether a job role would fit you, ask someone who’s been in the industry
- Research technical interview processes
Sprint 2: October – December At this point, you should be hearing back from applications.
If you’re not hearing good things:
- Change your resume immediately
- Keep applying through Thanksgiving break
- If you have absolutely no good news by Christmas break, switch approaches:
- Network more
- Change company types (ex: shift from big tech to startups)
- Consider doing research at your school
- Freshman year note: You don’t have to land an internship, but you do need experiences this year. Get an on-campus technical job, join a club, or program a solution for a non-technical professor. Create something you can be proud of. If the internship isn’t working out, focus on positioning yourself to have options next year.
If you’re hearing positive responses:
- Prepare for interviews as you move forward in the process
Sprint 3: January – March
- Accept your offer
- Handle alternative options
- Complete whatever paperwork and communications are required – sometimes this is time-consuming and comes in waves
Sprint 4: April – June
- Plan your internship intentions: How will you network, ask for more responsibilities, and deliver your best work?
- Research opportunities for next year
- Plan summer internship logistics (housing, etc.)
- Set individual goals for your internship experience
The Reality
The reality of applying to internships is that you will get some rejections. I got a lot. Applications are a numbers game, though. Quality experience, persistence in applying, and refining what you do when things don’t go as expected will eventually get you there.
When I was applying to things first semester of freshman year, I would continuously get rejected. Then I would think to myself, “Whats wrong? Maybe I am just not good enough or what they are looking for.” That made me feel bad. Feeling bad with no recourse is unproductive. Changing my perspective is what helped me land a more opportunities!
Give yourself grace, but know that you will need to do everything in your power to get where you want to be. Recruiters are looking to find a candidate that is an optimal culture fit, has proven past results, and is enthusiastic about the work that they do. Thats what it really boils down to. Show who you really are and what you are passionate about. It will only be a matter of time before you land something 🙂
So you have a whole list of possible recommendations now. Focus on one that sounds the most interesting to you. Pick the one where you think, “this could be interesting to work on even after my coursework every day.” Go with that. Now you have to research best ways of configuring, what types of software you need to download, documentation, and YouTube videos of people who have done it before.
When you finish, you can add the project to your resume. Explain how to use a tool you built in GitHub. Or how you found a new vulnerability. Honestly, you should just do whatever subject you think you might be interested in.
Small steps like this will add up over time to your overall understanding. Piece by piece, things will make more sense. You will understand what you enjoy contributing to the most. Then – you can seek out internships that focus on that. Pairing these two together will let you get a glimpse to see if you could actually be happy doing that particular thing after undergrad.
