Engineering Grad Students Offer Tips on How to Find Internships

Software Engineering graduate student Prathmesh Parmar successfully landed an internship with Concur Technologies, and hopes that the lessons he acquired during his own internship search will help other students. "Your LinkedIn profile should have your professional profile picture, courses, achievements, past work experience, skills, and a profile summary. All these things are very important and should be kept updated," says Parmar. "Constantly update your LinkedIn profile to be on top of the searches. And ask for referrals from your peers, alumni, and professors, as referrals are the easiest, fastest and best way you could land an interview."

Other graduate engineering students offered good advice as well, which we compiled into a tip web page: A Dozen Top Tips to Help You Find an Internship. You can also find this sheet at the top of the Graduate Engineering Students Success (GESS) page. If you are a graduate engineering student, this is a great page to explore. Be sure to take advantage of the GESS office’s drop-in career advising hours as well.

Palash Hedau (Software Engineering) is a Product Development intern at F5 Networks. His story is one of persistence and resilience, both 菠菜网lol正规平台 Spartan traits. He shares that he applied for nearly 400 internships (between December 15th and Feb 20th), and went through six rounds of interviews at F5 before getting an offer letter. He reminds us, "Don’t lose hope until the last day. Students have received internship calls even in June and July. Be ready for the interview!"

Also interning with F5 Networks is Sheetal More (Electrical Engineering, Computer Networking), who reminds students, "Review all your coursework thoroughly, as it will help a lot while you prepare for interviews."

Another Electrical Engineering graduate student, Sai Rama Krishna Nalla, currently interns with Cisco as a hardware engineer. Nalla advises students not to delay "as soon as you come across a job opening, maybe in LinkedIn or your target company’s official website. Thousands of students may compete with us in the Bay Area, so being ahead of them will be a smart thing."

Vraj Mistry, also in Electrical Engineering, found an internship at Zero-Based Energy. Vraj advises, "Let’s say you are planning for a summer internship; start applying as soon as spring semester starts. And don’t overload yourself by only applying once a week or so; make it a point to distribute your applications a few times each week."

Graduate engineering students should know that career resources are available. Marta Ramirez-Rodenas is the Engineering Graduate Student Advisor and her office is in ENG 247 (2nd Floor). Judi Garcia is our International Student Counselor who does career drop-ins at the GESS and is also at the San Jose State Career Center (ADM 255). Kelly Masegian is our STEM Career Counselor within the San Jose State University Career Center.

The Career Center also offers several resources for students including "Beyond the Career Fairs [pdf]" and a Job/Internship Search Guide [pdf]. What are your tips for finding an internship? If you have any hacks that are not already listed, please submit them here so we can offer the most up-to-date information to our Spartan engineers.