Just Got My First Internship!

in #life6 years ago

I'm proud to announce that I have just received my first internship in college. This was not an easy task and took a lot more work than I thought, but it paid off and I now have a 17-month internship with a very large company.

Applying


Since I'm a Junior now, I started really looking for good internships. I applied for some last year but never heard back because I was a Sophomore and a majority of companies want undergrads who are in their Junior year of college. Applying wasn't a normal process and at first I didn't even think I could apply. One of the main requirements is that you must have at least a 3.0 GPA. Well I DID have good grades until I took Calculus 2 and other math courses that were out to get me. Sadly, I finished my Sophomore year with a 2.9 GPA. My girlfriend insisted that I come with her to an interest meeting to at least see what the position is about and get further information.

If you don't think you'll get in, apply anyway

After the meeting, I decided to apply. At least then if I were to get rejected, I would feel good that I tried instead of asking myself "what if I applied." This internship required that I apply through our schools hiring site first and then I'd be able to apply to the position through the companies site. Since I had a 2.9, I wasn't actually allowed to apply because I didn't meet the requirements. But I'm so close you know? Why give up now without trying. So I went to another interest meeting a week later so I could have a conversation with the hiring manager for the company. She said not to give up and gave me details as to who I can talk to so I can apply. So after the second meeting, I went back home and emailed the woman who is in charge of the Universities hiring site. I told her my situation and she said they'd be able to wave me through the restriction so I have a chance. One issue though was that I needed to fix my resume and write a cover letter. I met with someone who could help me restructure my resume because it needed A LOT of work as well as teach me how to write a cover letter. This guidance is provided by the University and I urge anyone who has this option at their school to take advantage. It's definitely worth it. When I left, I spent the next three hours building both so I could send them in and apply for the position in time.

Hard Work Pays Off

Now at this point, I realized I've put in a lot of effort for something I don't even meet the requirements for. Why am I doing this?

  1. Well after going to both meetings, I realized that this is a huge opportunity I'd be missing out on if I don't join. It's for 17 months first of all! Normal internships only last about 10 weeks during the summer. Being able to be a part of a company for 17 months will definitely teach you a lot more than 10 weeks will.
  2. Another point (and this is a long one) is that I wanted to explain why I should be able to apply even though I don't have a 3.0. Being in school has taught me a lot, but more importantly, I've learned about myself. I've realized that I am smart, but not book smart. By that I mean I don't believe studying to get all A's is the true way to be successful. Constantly learning about your interests and doing stuff for your major is. I have friends in my Computer Science courses who barely understand Git, yet seem to ace all of their tests. Why? Because they spend all their time studying for the test but don't do anything outside of classwork to further their learning. This puts them at a disadvantage when applying because their resume may say a 3.5 GPA, but they don't have any skills to show in the degree they're working on. I spend every day trying to learn something new or further my knowledge in a skill I already know. For example, I'm planning on running a Proxmox Virtual Environment once I get the hard drives to learn more about system administration, virtual environments, file systems, and networking knowledge. As I was saying earlier about those people getting As on everything, they probably don't deal with this in their free time. I'm not saying they're dumb and that they don't try hard. We all do. But if you want to be successful, it takes more than just getting good grades. You need to show that you're determined to learn a lot in an ever growing field where technology ceases to stop expanding.

So after putting in both applications, I patiently waited a few weeks before hearing back. Weeks pass and I get an email saying I'm invited to a networking event that is mandatory. The purpose of the event is for the recruiters to get to know us better. Now at the time, I thought "Oh I'm sure everyone got this email. This must be something we all have to do." But to my surprise, only about 55 of us were actually invited out of the over 200 applications they received. This made me feel great because not only did I make it to the next round, I was able to talk about my skills outside of school that really show who I am. Along with the email came instructions for use to schedule an interview time. This would be a few days after the networking event and would be the "formal internship interview."
The event was for two hours and helped a lot. We were in groups of about four or five and went to different tables every 15 minutes. At each table was someone currently working for the company and they would ask us some basic interview questions like "Talk about a time where you worked as a group. What were the difficulties, how did you overcome them, etc." So we answered many different questions and it got me realizing that I wasn't that prepared. The networking event wasn't to help or hinder our chances of getting the internship, but more of a way to prepare us for how we should answer these types of questions.

After the event, I had two days to prepare for the real interview. I spent each day looking over "the top questions asked at interviews" and coming up with answers for everything. I wanted to make sure I had an answer right away and didn't pause with works like "um" or just looking confused. I probably got 5 hours of sleep the night before because I was so excited and nervous.

The Interview


Thursday morning, the day of my interview, I head to the building and arrive early. Eagerly waiting, I was going over the answers I would say to specific questions. Then they called me in. I greeted them professionally, sat down and the questions began. I don't think my heart has ever beat faster. None of the questions confused me, but I definitely rambled on with a few of my answers because I wanted to make sure I covered everything they asked. I said some things that could've been worded better but I was too nervous to reiterate so I just stuck with it and hoped for the best. At one point, one of the interviewers (there were three) asked what I like to do outside of school. This was it. The question I had wanted to be asked this whole time. I proudly talked about my involvement in the cryptocurrency community and how I have a virtual penetration testing environment setup at home. For those curious, it's running Kali Linux, Ubuntu 16.04, Windows Server 2008, and Pfsense as a virtual router/firewall. They had asked so many technical questions following both responses and I was able to respond without hesitation. I wanted to make sure they knew I had knowledge beyond just my grades and that I'm eager to learn anything that's thrown at me. They asked a few other standard interview questions and then thanked me for my time and said I'll hear back within a week.

This was the longest week ever

The Following Week


Thursday night arrived and I get an email from the company. The first word in the header said "Congratulations." I thought this was unreal. So I opened the email, read the paragraph over and over making sure I understood it correctly and then just stared at the screen in disbelief. I actually got in. Out of the hundreds that applied, me and about 50 other students got accepted. I messaged all of my friends, called my parents, then called my girlfriend to tell everyone the good news. It was a great night. The email stated we would get further information in the coming week with instructions for officially accepting the offer.

So now I have just received my email asking to confirm my decision (obviously I accepted right away) and got more information about when the internship starts. As for my actual position, I'm not 100% sure yet. Since it's a large internship, there are a variety of positions people go into based on their major and focus. I'm a cyber security focus and I explained my interest in networking during the interview as that was one of the questions. The internship does offer a networking ands security position, so I'm assuming I would go into that. Regardless, I'm excited to join. I start a week before second semester starts (so early January) and will work up to 19 hours weekly during the semester, 40 hours weekly over the summer, then back to 19 hours each semester of my Senior year. And yes it is paid.

I wanted to make this post to show that even if you think you aren't good at something, apply or work hard to at least try. If you don't try, you'll never know what could have been. For my case, I was lucky enough to show that grades don't mean everything. It's how willing you are to work hard and show your motivation towards your career. I didn't have any hopes of getting in but I at least wanted to be proud and say I tried.

Sort:  

Congrats on your internship! Calc is a killer for sure, but I'm glad you didn't let your grades in it hold you back from applying. Looking forward to hearing more about this position!

Thanks! I'll definitely update when I know what exactly my position is.

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.36
TRX 0.12
JST 0.039
BTC 69965.85
ETH 3540.49
USDT 1.00
SBD 4.71