10 Essential Tips for Tech Job Seekers: A College Student's Guide
Discover 10 essential tips for college students aspiring to land a dream tech job!
Landing a coveted tech job can be a daunting task for college students. I’ve been in your shoes, and I know firsthand the challenges of breaking into the tech industry. With fierce competition and high expectations, it's crucial to stand out from the crowd. This blog post provides 10 essential tips to help you navigate the job market, showcase your skills, and land your dream tech job. From updating your resume to mastering technical skills, these tips will equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to succeed. Let’s get started!
Please note that this blog is targeted towards college students, but it is entirely possible to join tech with a high school degree or alternative education with the right set of skills and resume!
Network Effectively
Your network is your net worth! I can understand how this may be frustrating to hear, but it holds true to this day. I deeply empathize with feeling that only nepo babies and those with strong family connections are easily landing internships and jobs, as I was in the exact same boat. My internship at Amazon was a wildcard and I had all the luck in the universe on my side by receiving an offer after blindly applying with no referral - but every new job that I have had thereafter has come through my network. In today’s tech job market (and even general job market), it is more important than ever to have a referral!
Now, the key theme to focus on is quality over quantity. Yes, you can collect hundreds of business cards at a job fair or networking event and add everyone on LinkedIn - but the chances of them helping you out in a meaningful way are small. Some people may be so generous to provide a referral through a single LinkedIn request, but most will not be so willing. More intimate or targeted events such as hackathons or tech-specific conferences may prove to be more valuable.
I am very selective with my mentors, but for good reason. You want to ensure they align with your values, goals, and even personality type! Just one person can open hundreds of doors through a meaningful connection, rather than a handful of dead end connections. I also recall in college being somewhat scared of constantly reaching out to mentors in powerful roles, but you have to remember that they know what they signed up for! In a fast-paced industry, mentorship relationships are where many find meaning and purpose in their day-to-day.
2. Leetcode Everyday (Unfortunately)
I have conducted or participated in over 100 technical interviews and the hardest thing to still wrap my head around is how wildly different they vary company to company. The one thing that holds true across them all is that you need to be pretty near perfect with your code output. The amazing news for college students is that a lot of you will beat out job seekers already in industry, as practicing coding exercises all day is a stark contrast from what happens on the job. Think of it as a muscle you need to keep building everyday, just like an instrument or sport.
These are some of the ways you may receive your assessment (all of which I have participated in): 1) in-person or via Zoom with live coding, 2) a take home assignment of a particular case study, 3) an automated coding test with free form boxes to submit code or a multiple choice test of the code output, or 4) a Leetcode type environment with questions just as you practiced. I recommend practicing all four of these different variations so that you are prepared!
3. Add Metrics and Impact to Every Single Bullet of Your Resume
What I often find in resumes is that a majority of job seekers are able to portray the qualitative aspects of their projects, internships, and roles - but rarely the quantitative impact. If you optimized code run time, by what percentage? If you worked on a ML project, what was the accuracy, precision, recall, and/or F1 score?
In addition to adding quantitative numbers, you will also want to include impact to each bullet. If you saved a company time by creating an automated script, how many hours per person or team per month were saved? What was the team or company able to accomplish, invest more in, or increase revenue by due to your work?
See two examples below of just a qualitative resume bullet versus a qualitative, quantitative, and outcome bullet:
Bad: Used Python to build a machine learning model on customer churn.
Good: Developed a Python-based logistic regression model, predicting customer churn with 98% accuracy, resulting in a 10% reduction in customer attrition and $5 million in annual savings.
This type of exercise is not only relevant to resumes, but also becomes extremely relevant in role. Teams must effectively communicate their ROI to leaders in order to gain investment for future projects and hiring.
4. Culture Fit Matters More Than You Think
Tech culture is indeed as cheesy as they portray in movies, so it is important to do your research on each company you interview for. Most will have their culture and principles listed on their website, and interviewers will be impressed if you show that you have done your homework. Though questions on perks, benefits, and pay are always top of mind - try to focus on themes such as teamwork, continuous learning, and diving deep.
Knowledge of company culture will be most important during the behavioral aspect of the interview loop, and most companies align their questions to their principles. For example, if a company has a principle on acting quickly - you will want to come up with a few examples of how you delivered within a tight timeline. Do not completely rebrand yourself to fit into a particular company’s unique culture; the right company will be a mutual fit.
5. Focus on Succinct Verbal and Writing Communication
Something that often shocks entry-level newcomers in tech is the unique communication style. Leaders often have very little time to go through email or slack messages, so it is important to be as succinct as possible. It is common to see misspellings or one word or sentence responses. Of course, if you are meeting someone new it is good to give an introduction as to who you are, what team you are on, what project you are working on, and your key objective — but for day-to-day communication with peers and leaders, you will want to keep it snappy.
In your interviews, they will be looking for someone who can clearly articulate problems and solutions. If you know that you are a rambler, practice first in writing narrowing down a paragraph to just a single sentence while still conveying the same messaging. Use the STAR format when interviewing to ensure you have covered all key areas being asked.
6. Do Not Sign Up for Coursework Using Outdated Coding Languages or Tools
You can imagine my dismay when all of my machine learning coursework in college used R, and everyone in tech only used Python. I was able to work hard on converting my skills to Python (I had at least taken one class on it), as some of the packages and syntax are similar enough - but I wish I had taken more coursework on Python instead in college. Remember, while required courses are essential, consider taking electives or online courses to gain exposure to emerging technologies and industry-standard tools. This proactive approach will better prepare you for success in the tech industry.
7. Use GitHub to Store School Projects
I wish that my coding courses in school made it mandatory to use GitHub for all projects, as it is such a great way to show off your portfolio of projects. If you have not created one, there are many free online courses that will show you how. Nowadays, many tech role openings will have a question in the application for your GitHub link. Get in the habit of keeping it up to date, and make sure you have cleaned up your syntax and added comments.
8. Learn How to Problem-Solve for the Business and Audience
Another observation that I have from conducting several interviews is that many people will come up with the most sophisticated answer, but not the right one. It is very rare that any role in tech will be completely insulated within their organization; you will most likely have frequent meetings with non-tech roles and business leaders. Every organization has specific goals, a budget, and limited bandwidth. It is extremely important to understand what the business objective and audience are before coming up with a solution. A simple Excel model or SQL script may make more sense to use rather than a productionized machine learning model - it depends on who will be using it, what exactly needs to be accomplished, and what resources are available. Of course in an interview you want to show off your knowledge of certain systems, models, and tools but make sure to ask clarifying questions first!
9. Create System Design Documentation or a Presentation for Each School Project
The success of a project in tech does not solely comprise of the code itself - a significant portion involves documentation, presenting to stakeholders, gathering iterative feedback, and influencing adoption of the system or tool. Even if your professor does not require it, get in the habit of creating documentation of the problem statement, methodology used and why, system design or approach, and FAQ’s on what a potential user may ask. This is an important habit to develop, as you will want to communicate these activities during interviews and also implement them in role. This also becomes important when asking for a promotion, as non-tech stakeholders and leaders will want to see your portfolio of projects worked on as well as impact on the organization.
10. Master Time Management and Prioritization
One of the most important skills needed for a role in tech is time management. For Technical Program Managers it becomes a majority of the job leading agile planning and workback plans - but it also applies to all roles. In school, your professor has already estimated the time to complete an assignment with a provided deadline. In the tech industry, you will have to estimate the level of effort on your own and communicate it to peers and managers.
There is always more work to do than there is time, so you will also want to learn how to prioritize effectively. This will involve tradeoffs on how long something will take versus how much of an impact it will have on an organization’s goals. You can practice this with your own schedule of schoolwork, extracurriculars, exercise, meals, socializing time, and hobbies. You may not be able to get everything done planned for a certain week, but you can rank to-do’s in order of importance, estimated time required, and any dependencies to organize your schedule better. Make sure you are including time for self care to prevent burnout! I recommend taking a stress management course if your school offers one, or a free online course.
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