I realized that all of my previous Capstone blogs were centered around my new grad SWE job search! It’s been an exhausting past few months and I’m excited to say that I’m almost finished completely with the recruitment season! I have gotten multiple full-time offers which was only possible due to a lot of support and advice from other students and mentors.

So to wrap up my last blog post, I wanted to write about common tips for students who are searching for an internship or full-time position that I don’t see as often. Please note this only applies to software engineer/development positions since that’s what I’ve been aiming for.

First of all, I went through three rounds of recruitment cycles which were the 2020-2021, 2021-2022, and 2022-2023 cycles. I only received 1 internship offer in the 2020 – 2021 offer but had a much better offer rate within the next two cycles.

But why talk about my own offer statistics? I wanted to point out something that I’ve seen some OSU students get confused on.

Advice #1 – Check Your Grad Date!

The vast majority of companies look for junior or senior level students when filling internship slots. So OSU post-bacc students should be aware of where they’d fall in terms of seniority level based on their current graduation year. Recruiters only spent around 15 seconds scanning a resume and move on. So if they see that you graduate in Spring 2024, they’ll calculate that you’re a junior and possibly move you onto the next round. But if your resume says Spring 2025, then you’d be a sophomore and probably be passed on.

This is what I encountered when applying in the 2020 – 2021 cycle, where my graduation date at the time put me as a sophomore-level student. I was lucky to find a company that took a chance on me and got my first internship experience.

But this was only possible because I got an opportunity to talk with the company’s head recruiter directly during a conference. Thus, this leads to my next recommendation…

Advice #2 – Networking is Important!

Yes, I know networking is like pulling out teeth. Recruiters ignore your connection request on LinkedIn, companies don’t respond to your cold emails, and so on. But I highly recommend try to spend time to network with company recruiters, attend online events, and go to in-person networking and conference events. I was able to get my first internship offer only because I reached out to the recruiter during a virtual conference (Grace Hopper). If I hadn’t done so, then I would’ve probably not gotten any internship offers for the 2020 – 2021 cycle and have a more difficult time during the 2021 – 2022 cycle. And when I later attended the 2022 Grace Hopper Celebration in-person along with other conferences, I found myself getting much more bites on my resume and even ended up receiving offers there and then!

To be honest, I’ve found networking to be useless 99% of the time and got burned out at times. But when it pays of that 1% of the time, it can truly lead to great opportunities!

Advice #3 – Be Aware of Tech Recruitment Timelines

Advice #4 – Plan & Study Ahead of Time

When I was around a year into my OSU degree, I started asking around and researching how to go about my internship hunt. And I still clearly remember learning just how strange and head-scratching the tech recruitment cycle was and how the heck students were supposed to figure it out without any help? I think it’s better explained with using this current recruitment cycle (2022 – 2023) and using an example of the usual recommendation for CS students for both internship and full-time recruitment:

• Summer – 2022
  • Students should start studying for the recruitment cycle (leetcode, behavioral interviews)
  • Students should work on their resume (hackathons, side-projects, open source tech)
• Fall – 2022
  • Companies start opening applications for internships/full-time
    • Most internships are for the upcoming summer (summer 2023) while full-time is often for winter and summer cohorts
  • Students should apply and prep for OAs + interviews
• Winter – 2023
  • Recruitment slows down; majority of tech companies have filled up headcount
  • Smaller, less tech focused companies are still recruiting heavily
• Spring – 2023
  • Most companies are finished or finishing up recruitment
  • Very very slow for recruitment overall
• Summer – 2022
  • Internships/full-time positions start

TLDR: Study in summer, go through the ringer during fall, and then things die down by late winter / early spring

Thus, students need to often study almost a year prior to the start of any position?! This caught me off-guard since I assumed, like many other OSU students, that I could start prepping in the fall quarter and slowly ramp up. Instead, I’ve found the tech recruitment cycle to be the opposite and often felt that I was always behind which was not great for my mental health.

Knowledge is power though! So if students are aware of this kind of timeline ahead of time, it gives them more wiggle room to try to plan around this hectic recruitment cycle. Something to keep in mind is that not every company follows this convention and open up positions whenever they need new people. However, this is the conventional timeline for many tech companies and what students often prep around.

Advice #5 – Don’t Take Rejections Personally

You’re gonna get a lot of rejections during the recruitment cycle. Sometimes it may be due to factors you can control (resume, technical/behavioral skills) but it can also be due to external stuff outside of your control. So don’t let rejections get to you! After you submit that application, erase it from your mind. Don’t obsessively check your email inbox for any signs of communication with that dream company of yours – forget it ever happened and move on with your life. They respond back with a hackerrank? Cool! They ghost you forever? Whatever. They send a rejection? Then celebrate that you’re not being ghosted at least!

One great thing about the OSU post-bacc program has been the supportive online community. On the unofficial post-bacc slack, there’s a #rejections channel where students can celebrate rejections together and provide much needed humor to the depressing recruitment cycle at times. Highly recommend students join and learn to celebrate those rejections instead of lamenting about them.

Advice #6 – Take Care of Yourself

I’ve written a lot so far so I’ll wrap it up with my last advice – don’t forget to take care of yourself! Recruitment cycle brings up a lot of stress and anxiety but I’ve found that taking care of myself and taking breaks really helped me do better with my OAs and interviews. So if you can, try to give yourself some room to breathe and pat yourself on the back for coming this far.