Each year, hundreds of thousands of students graduate with a computer science related degree in the US. Those who go to top colleges like Stanford and MIT don’t have much problem differentiating themselves from others, but what about the rest of us? What do YOU need to do to stand out from the crowd and get interviews at companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft etc?
I have ten tips for you which will increase your chances ten fold. And I hope students from other majors or targeting other companies could draw parallels and apply them to their situation.
To make this post short and easy to digest, I am dividing it into two parts. In part 2, in addition to 5 tips I explain how this is relevant not just for students, but also for everyone else so please stay tuned.
GPA
Get “good” grades! Well, this is common sense right? What I mean is don’t let “Perfect” be the enemy of “Good”. Don’t shy away from courses that add a lot of value, but may compromise your perfect GPA. Many companies use GPA as a filtering criteria. They may not look at your resume, if your GPA is not above say 3.5. Many companies won’t care. For those who do, this threshold may vary, but generally 3.5+ is a good guideline to follow. This doesn’t matter AT ALL later in your life, but as a student, a combination of good GPA and good courses could put your resume in front of more eyes.
Audit Course(s)
This brings us to our next point. Are there any courses which you want to take, but you can’t follow the strict requirements of assignments and deadlines? You know you can learn a lot from a course, but are afraid of getting a bad grade and screwing up your GPA? If yes, then auditing a course might be an option. This is what I personally did. When I was in Binghamton, I knew that I wanted to get a job at Bloomberg. Bloomberg was (and is) big on C/C++ and talking to a few folks made me realize that the knowledge of “Systems Programming” was very important. My coursework for that semester was set, so I informally audited the course. I didn’t attend any classes, but I followed the syllabus and self-studied from the course book. I diligently completed all the assignments even it took me a few extra months. This helped me tremendously in clearing Bloomberg interviews. All the extra effort for months was totally worth it!
Coding Competitions / Hackathons
Your college may have local coding clubs who arrange coding competitions and/or Hackathons. Coding competitions and hackathons are slightly different. In coding competition, you are given a set of coding questions that you are supposed to solve in given time (usually 2/3/4 hours). The format can vary, but usually the person who solves most problems in fewest number of tries wins. Coding competitions prepare you for technical interviews – because in both you are supposed to solve a small(ish) coding problems in given time.
In Hackathons, you can work in groups and build a real life project (although in “hacky” ways) over a day or 2. This is a great way to beef up your projects portfolio.
If your college doesn’t offer it, or if you are no longer in college, there are plenty of opportunities online. Hackerrank, Topcoder, Leetcode etc are a few online places where some kind of coding competition is going on all the time. Similarly Google search for Hackathons and you will find plenty of ways to participate.
Both are great ways to network with other like minded folks and learn from them. I know many people who don’t participate because of fear of failure. Please don’t fall in that trap.
Publish Papers / Tech Blogs
For research inclined folks, publishing research papers is a great way to show your expertise in your area. It is also a great way to impress your professors! More on that in the next section. In today’s world, research papers is not the only publication you can have. You can write a technical or any blog on anything you want, anytime you want.
Leverage Professors!
This may not be as intuitive, but your professors could be your great advocates. When I was leading recruiting at Binghamton University for Bloomberg, a lot of great recommendations came from the professors! The professors could also have a strong alumni network who you could tap into if you need to. If you are getting good grades, showcasing your work in coding competitions / Hackathons or are working with the professors on some research, providing a recommendation for you won’t be too hard for them.
I hope you find these tips useful. If this is not relevant for you, you may know someone who could benefit from this. Please share this post with them and also subscribe to my YouTube channel for more useful information. More on the remaining tips in my next post. Stay tuned!