I wanted to use this blog post to reflect on my job hunt last fall and my current employment situation. First off, the obvious – job hunting is the worst. I quit my career in data analytics to do this program full time, so I was motivated to put the leg work in. Last summer, in addition to taking classes, I took a two pronged approached to prepping for finding an internship for summer 2022. I worked on two personal projects (one being a fullstack CRUD app, and the other being a chrome extension), and also practiced my data structures and algorithms knowledge by doing Leetcode. Leetcode is controversial, but I actually enjoyed working on the problems. They’re like little brain teasers (note – I did NOT enjoy the stress of solving these brain teasers in time blocked interviews that determined my future). I did around 130 Leetcode problems, and felt ready to find an internship when fall rolled around.

I honestly feel like I got lucky when I got my internship. I had very few bites on my resume. I finally made it through, and I ended up with one of the easiest interviews of my life. After a standard behavioral interview, I had the technical round. I was prepared to struggle with a complicated dynamic programming problem, but I ended up being asked a very basic problem we did back in CS162. The prep work I did definitely helped me stay composed, but it is funny that I put in dozens of hours practicing for much harder problems, and by sheer luck got a very easy question. Goes to show that somethings in life are just random.

I am fortunate that I received a return offer from my internship, so I have a job lined up after graduation. I’ll be going back to the team I interned with, and they rock, so I’m very excited. Having a job lined up has allowed me to finally relax and just enjoy this final quarter of being in school. My sympathies go out to my fellow classmates who are taking this capstone course while also interviewing, it’s a tough position to be in. That said, I do think OSU does a great job setting students up for success in finding a job, you just have to put a little legwork in.