During my first year attending the OSU post-bacc program, I quickly realized the importance of completing an internship in the tech industry. However, I did not at first realize how difficult this process would be. Luckily, I had heard from others the advice of starting early. For those that may not know, the process of applying for internships and/or jobs in tech is quite rigorous. These interviews usually consist of multiple rounds, and involve one, or possible more, coding questions. From my own experience, these questions are not easy, and they include the added stress of completing them on a white-board while also talking through your solution. Because of this, I learned how important it was to begin studying months before I planned on applying for roles.
To begin preparation, I enrolled in an interview prep course that took about two months to complete. This course walked through the patterns in many common interview problems, which I found incredibly helpful. I would recommend learning these common patterns over trying to memorize certain problems. Also, practice makes perfect! After completing the course, I spent a lot of time doing the Leetcode “grind,” as these are the types of problems that seem to be common for interviewers to ask.
After I felt prepared by going through the above process, I began to apply to internships for the summer of 2021. I had a list of several top choices I knew I wanted to apply to, with Red Hat being one of them.
Luckily, I landed an interview. I was very excited! I wanted to be as prepared as possible, so an additional step I took for this interview, besides doing research on the company and product, was reading a book written by the previous CEO, “The Open Organization.” I found this step to be crucial, as Red Hat’s culture is quite unique, and something they take pride in.
Several weeks after a couple of rounds of interviews with Red Hat, I fortunately received an offer for a software engineer internship. I accepted, and afterwards quickly began to prepare for said internship, as I would be working on OpenShift, and until that point, had zero experience related to anything Kubernetes. This was an intense learning period, and will probably be the topic of my next post. Stay tuned!
