Month: October 2021

I felt very fortunate to have received my first internship, however part of me felt as though I avoided one of the hardest parts of the interview process: the technical assessment. It wasn’t until I begin the search for my second internship that I realized how unprepared I was for the dreaded online assessments. Luckily, I was not the only OSU Post-Bacc CS student who felt as though they needed extra preparation, and other students had pointed me in the direction of the Codepath Interview Prep Course.

Codepath’s course was the perfect amount of structure and preparation materials I needed to study for the technical interview assessments. We spent each week focusing on a particular topic related to Data Structures and Algorithms, starting with a focus on Linked Lists and eventually making our way to more advanced topics like Dynamic Programming and Graphs. While the material was information that could readily be found online, it was the structure and the organization that I really benefited from.

The hard work eventually paid off when I was offered another internship, this time with a more reputable company! Interviewing is incredibly challenging for a lot of reasons, but once I was able to identify that the technical portion was my biggest weakness, it allowed me to focus my attention in that area. While there is no way to know all of the potential questions that might be asked during a technical interview, it is definitely possible to solidify your understanding of the fundamentals and go into the interview with more confidence!

After being enrolled in OSU Computer Science classes for about a year and a half I decided it was time to apply for my first internship. Little did I know that the search for an internship would be a difficult process.

The first step in applying for an internship was preparing my application materials. Re-working my resume to highlight technical skills and experience was challenging, but being able to receive help from OSU resources made the process a lot less painful. In addition to the resume overhaul, it was necessary to create a portfolio to showcase my personal projects. It took a number of iterations to create a portfolio that I was proud of, but once those two critical pieces were in place I was ready to start sending out applications.

This was the part that I underestimated the most. My first internship required me to send out over one hundred and fifty applications. For the vast majority of these applications I received zero response. The companies that did respond usually followed a similar pattern: send an online coding assessment, have a followup interview, finish with a panel interview with the hiring team. My confidence was slowly fading away as my email inbox became flooded with rejections, however I finally had a breakthrough with an offer from a local semiconductor manufacturing company. I’ll never forget talking with the hiring manager, and how excited I was for the opportunity. It was this internship that ultimately opened doors to future positions.

Prior to studying computer science and searching for a career as a software engineer, I had a previous life in the environmental field. I’ve always felt a deep connection with nature. My passion for outdoor recreation grew into an interest in natural resource conservation, which ultimately blossomed into an academic pursuit in environmental science.

So why the abrupt change in career fields? Well, technology has always been a driving force in how I have collected/analyzed data within the environmental field. How we collected information related to endangered bird populations, mapped geographic changes over time, and helped stakeholders visualize where funds would be spent were all examples of how we leveraged technology as environmental scientists. It seemed clear that taking advantage of learning new technological skills would help advance my career and open doors moving forward.

I still remember the conversations I had with my mom and my girlfriend about making this career change. It’s fun to reminisce about how nervous I was about making the change, yet how supportive my friends and family were. Knowing what I know now about this journey I can honestly say that this was one of the best decisions I have ever had!