How I got Software Engineering and Data Science Internships | Computer Science Job Search Part 1

hi everyone in this video i'll talk about my internship and job seeking experience as i was doing my master's degree at penn my master's degree was called masters in computer and information technology or mcit it's a program for people who don't have a computer science or technical background and are transitioning into computer science if you haven't already check out the playlist which i'll link above that has more mcit related videos and information please make sure that you subscribe and turn on the notifications

alright so let's begin this video so buckle your seatbelt is going to be a wild ride let's start from the very beginning first week of mcit i just arrived in philadelphia not really familiar with the place and courses just started and in that first week there was a huge career fair there was a lot of tech companies especially so i came in looked around and thought about all the different companies that i could talk to and just thinking about how much more i can do now that i will have a cs degree probably have a lot more internship opportunities fast forward a couple

weeks and i thought i was doing okay right then i got my first midterm back and i failed 592. my probability test i'm not the best student but i've also never actually failed a test for midterm before so this was definitely a first for me and i was very stressed out about this i got like 54 i think yeah and that was a lower score i've ever gotten and you know that definitely set me into panic mode and you know really stopped thinking about internships career fairs and just thought about i need to pass these classes that pretty much set the tone of that first semester it felt like i was drinking from a fire hose like with all that information coming in doing assignments preparing for midterms yeah that was it was just so much to take in and it was a semester that was full of self-doubt i thought that maybe i should stop trying to do cs go and try to be a doctor again which is what i was doing before not that being a doctor is any easier but i just felt like i couldn't do cs anymore and this is when i just started

and early november rolled around and this is when somebody came up to me and went like hey tina how many lead codes did you do for those of you who don't know lead code is a website that has a really large collection of software engineering interview questions and it's pretty much like a ritual for all software engineers to go and practice these questions before starting interviewing for both their internships as well as full-time jobs so you see i didn't actually know what lead code was and since that person was asking me that question that meant that person not only assumed that i was applying for internships that i was actually preparing for internships well i hadn't even thought about internships at that point so i was like oh god you know i should probably think about internships now i applied to a bunch of

things online and the good thing about have doing a cs degree and applying for software engineering is that you don't actually have to write a cover letter so you just like cast out a huge net of applications and see like who responds to you and the first wave that was closing up were the banks so i applied to all of the banks that i could find online and two of them got back to me the first one was goldman sachs and the second one was capital one

the capital one process started off with them sending me something and pretty much going like hey are you a u. s citizen and i was like no i'm not a u. s citizen and they just never responded to me again so i guess they were only looking for u. s citizens the goldman sachs one was in late november and they sent me an online screening test where they had a few coding questions that he had to complete i still hadn't done any lead code at that time but i did go on glass doors and just look at like all the questions that apparently they do ask and thankfully i found some of the questions that they actually asked me for that round so i was somehow able to pass then around december they sent me a second round which was a behavioral interview they sent you a few behavioral questions and you had to talk on video and you just have to answer them so pro tip for that if a company ever asks you will you ever lie will you ever cheat will you do something that's illegal or bad the answer is no so you know they're like did you if something were to happen and you can't finish your job would you try to take a shortcut no if uh if anybody asks you if you can help them out with something that's confidential then what would you say you know like that that is apparently what they were looking for so i was able to go on to the next round they scheduled that final round where i had to go on site sometime after winter break so winter break was in december and i was supposed to go in around january going into winter break i plan to like you know really dudely code and study and read cracking the coding interview which is like the bible of cracking the coding interview uh but none of that actually happened because i was honestly just so burnt out from that first semester keeping up with classes and just like learning everything i just really needed those few weeks to rest so i think i did like one lead code and a few pages of cracking the coding interview and that was about it so then when i was actually supposed to go interview i was like so terrified because i didn't do any of the prep that i was supposed to do and i felt like i didn't actually know anything at all when i came back to campus after a week or so i then went to new york from philadelphia where i did my final round the format was two interviews back to back and each interview had two interviewers where they would ask you questions i'm not even kidding for three of the interview questions um i literally didn't even know what they were talking about at that time because i didn't learn algorithms or data structures yet so they're like oh like you have this linked list like how would you know do some things with it and i was just like what's a linked list for that final interview i think i got along pretty well with the interviewer and we kind of had a chat about my startup experiences and he asked me a string manipulation question which is something that i actually didn't know how to do and i was able to do that one fine after finishing that interview i was pretty sure that i didn't get that job because i essentially failed three of the four interviews and the fourth one was just so happened that he asked me a pretty simple question and i just had a conversation with the interviewer at that time and i didn't hear back for two months during that time i was still in school and i was started all the classes for my second semester and i just like applied to more things randomly like basically like whatever there was i just like you know click submit hand it in my resume and didn't really think that much about it after then after

a month or so i got an interview invite from blackstone which is another financial institute in new york this was also a virtual interview but by this time i had already learned some algorithms as well as data structures and i was able to pass that virtual round fine they told me to go on site for my final round so i took the amtrak went to new york again and um that was a complete disaster they asked me something about like how do you code an elevator and i was just like i don't know how would you call it code in an elevator so that didn't go really well and i like for sure knew that i didn't get blackstone and then i came back you know still doing school also applied just randomly to more things i applied to so many things like hundreds of different applications i sent

out and then so after two months of not hearing anything at all i got that offer from goldman sachs i was so grateful that i was able to get it since i got that offer i didn't apply to more things but remember how i said that i was applying to so many things before

i then got an interview invite for amazon and this was also the first virtual round so i figured like might as well just give it a go right so i did the first round and i managed to pass that thankfully i was learning about uh like all the things that they were actually testing us on for the interviews at that time this was in march of 2019 and except for what we were learning in school i actually didn't touch lead code at all amazon only has two rounds so first they do that virtual screening round and then they go and just do that final round also online this one would be like video with one of the employees at amazon for my final round the interview asked me six questions the first three of them were really easy questions that you could have done without actually taking algorithms war data structures for question four and five i was actually just really lucky they were connected and those two questions were exactly what were in my algorithms homework that week so because of that i was able to get those questions right and for the last question i like literally had no idea how to do it and i think i just like made something up

apparently that was good enough to get through and i also got an offer for amazon in case you're interested click the video above which will go into more detail about how i chose between my internship offer from amazon and the one from goldman sachs so long story short i chose goldman sachs and i did my internship at goldman sachs because they let me do stuff that was more data science related which was what i was more interested in