Hi! Today’s a beautiful day!

This is my retro for the Fall, because it’s pretty important to look back and reflect – so I can do better in the future, but also because I don’t do a very good job of giving myself credit. I find myself constantly looking for the next step, feeling like I haven’t achieved everything I wanted, and left unfulfilled. And always looking forward to the next step isn’t at all a bad thing. What is bad is that I let myself feel unfulfilled and unaccomplished. I often find myself telling my peers they’re amazing, and that they should give themselves more credit. I do it because I often forget to take my own advice.

What did I accomplish? What went well/not well? What would I do differently if I could do it over again?

Recap

I got some nice offers this year!

I got SWE Internship offers from 2 FAANG Companies, 2 major banks, a major retail company, and a consulting internship at a big 4 consulting firm.

Total stats:

• Applied: 50 Companies

  I applied to more companies the previous 2 years. This year I only applied to 50 because I feel like I can apply to more competitive positions at places I actually want to work at (and still get something). Note: THESE WERE NOT MY TOP 50 COMPANIES. Lots of companies this year either aren’t recruiting interns for 2021, or have a late recruiting season for next summer.

• Informational Interviews / Referrals: 18 Companies

  Okay, so maybe I only actually had 8 coffeechats with people at companies >20min long. Around 4 of them were just conversations from online career fairs, and 4 of them were just connections I already had established and didn’t need to do a coffeechat for them to refer me. I didn’t bother with career fairs much this year.

• 8 Referrals led to me landing an interview.

  I’m a pretty remarkable candidate. I might not be from an Ivy League school, but I’ve interned at Google and NIH at this point. I’ve demo’d in maybe 3 hackathons, and… I have a personality (student involvement, consulting on the side, etc..)

• Completed Interviews with 10 Companies

  It might not sound like much, but interviews can be 1-3hrs. Having 10 over the span of 8 weeks averages out to 2 hours lost every week. On top of Online Assessments (coding challenges), and doing coffeechats every week, the time really stacks up. I didn’t take every interview I was offered. I didn’t take every interview I was offered. I realized I had better things to do than interview with a company I felt was 2nd rate to another offer letter I already had.

• 4 Interviews landed with just an application (and maybe a coding challenge).

  This really goes to show you can’t expect recruiters to read every resume. and parses are kinda just a myth.

Tips / What went well

• APPLY EARLY

  Cannot stress this enough! Applying to a company the same week their application opens massively increases the chance a recruiter is going to read over your resume. There’s just too many to look over all the applications in any case.

• Just do it during your break times.

  It. SUCKS. But it takes a lot of time to commit a good application for everything. You just have to squeeze in a few extra hours of work every day. It might be during your meals, late at night, or between homework assignments as a break. It’s tons of time. Still, you do what you need to.

• Set aside time for the Online Assessments

  Whenever I got an email for one, I blocked out the two or three hours the test needed on my Google Calendar. It needs dedicated time of concentration.

What did not work well?

• Giving up on a Online Assessments

  To be completely honest, I gave up on some OAs, or just didn’t finish them because it was taking too much time. Some I knew I could do, but I just didn’t have the energy to do them. Or just didn’t have the motivated. As someone extrinsically motivated, I might get to the last question on an OA with 2 hrs to spare, but I didn’t want to code all the way through it. I just submitted something kinda crappy, and sometimes, the tests have hidden tests for your code to run again you had no idea about. I just wanted to relax at a cafe with friends sometimes. And that’s okay.

What would I do differently?

• BUILD THE WEBSITE.

  I’m NOW building the website after procrastinating so hard on it. It’s like the 3rd time I’ve rebuilt it because it’s always looked like a 3rd grader designed it in the past. I definitely didn’t have time to make it during school + recruiting season, but I shouldv’e just sacrificed maybe 4 days of my summer break before school started to crank it out.