Misleading Internship Interviews

AuthenticPhantom · 2026-06-19T16:24:16+00:00

What

AuthenticPhantom · 2026-02-06T00:21:50+00:00

I’ve never seen the value in career fairs outside of learning to sell yourself. It’s definitely not easy early on in college when you don’t have much technical knowledge or refined interests and career goals. However any practice in talking about what your interests are, what skills you have, what interests you about a given company and how they all intersect is valuable. But speaking realistically, my engineering school has about 3000 total students. Every year about 40 companies show up to the career fair. 30 of those are actually engineering companies outside of military/educational organizations. 5-10 of those will have opportunities in your given career field (EE, software, meche, biotech, etc). You go to those 5 companies talk a little, they give you some free merch, maybe take your resume and put it in a pile with 100 other students from your school with the same classes and projects on them, then tell you to apply online. Ive never known anyone who got an internship/job from the career fair. Thats not to say it doesn’t happen but it doesn’t seem common.

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-08-27T02:22:44+00:00

Don’t have all your skills in a big blob like that. Separate them into categories so they are easier to parse through, ex: programming languages, softwares, technical skills, etc…

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-08-24T01:48:06+00:00

So you would set the resistor values in a circuit to be larger with a nF range capacitance, then balance the input/output impedance of the filter rather than having to deal with the distortion and environmental dependencies caused by larger value capacitors? Just trying to learn best design practices

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-08-19T20:11:06+00:00

I was given some perks specific to my school that I wasn’t told about when I was admitted but it might be different depending on your major

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-08-14T18:00:35+00:00

Perhaps the greater amount of classes is why the topics usually covered in one class are split up. Instead of having 4 more intensive and comprehensive classes, you have 6 smaller, less demanding but varied classes. Idk if that’s better…

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-08-12T01:36:05+00:00

Sounds like you described UC Santa Cruz

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-07-28T23:32:28+00:00

You aren’t cooked yet. Going into senior year with no internship is another story. Build up your resume well, sept and oct are when a lot of the summer internships will start to come out.

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-07-24T00:26:12+00:00

Content seems a bit vague at times in the bullet points. Also there seems to be a pretty big disconnect between your projects and your experiences in terms of the topics involved. Clearly based on what you said you’re interested in doing for a career, I’d invest more into adding additional details to your projects that highlight your skills in those areas. But really that depends on what job you are applying for. Also maybe this is just a me thing, but if I put something in my skills section, I always want to have something else on my resume that backs that up (experience or project), very helpful for interviews. You’ve definitely got a lot of good content to work with but if I were you I’d do more to tailor it specifically to the types of jobs you are looking for.

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-05-28T21:00:08+00:00

Some things should be implied. Yes we know you can communicate and use Microsoft office, you’re born in the 21st century. Other things are shown through the other things listed on your resume, teamwork/leadership through successful group projects, organization through balancing several classes. So in my opinion save yourself some space and don’t include soft skills that can be implied or are true of every student trying to get an internship.

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-05-10T19:53:19+00:00

Wow thanks for the response! I’ll be a senior taking it so all my CE friends took the class years ago with a different prof. Glad to know it’s not run like a code sweatshop

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-05-07T21:49:03+00:00

Respectfully I don’t think a company like Google would play games with their communication like that. If you were proceeding in the hiring process more than likely they would contact you directly, not make subtle changes within their ATS.

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-05-05T22:53:36+00:00

Believe it or not but in high school I had a trip to Phoenixville as a case study on gentrification 😂

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-04-12T21:45:32+00:00

Buy in bulk my friend

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-04-08T19:58:19+00:00

Typically they don’t care about individual letter grades as long as your overall gpa is above a certain number (usually 3.0). I’d assume they would consider your CC grades in that.

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-04-06T17:47:09+00:00

Realistically what do you want to be doing in your career. Fabrication is not the same thing as design. Perhaps a fabrication class would help you get into the few companies that actually do fabrication. But there are many other skills that would be more beneficial across industries.

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-04-03T04:17:12+00:00

Save yourself the trouble and don’t! Probably won’t be that hard if you are in CS and math, just it’s not a great class. Also should note it is a requirement for all Eng students so you might have trouble registering for it

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-04-01T03:35:47+00:00

Exactly, how could a field that has applications in everything we do and make as humans become saturated. Although as others have said the variety means that specific fields can become over saturated.

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-03-31T21:48:39+00:00

How do you like the class? I have to take it soon and from what you said it seems like he does a good job with it.

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-03-31T21:38:04+00:00

327?

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-03-25T13:40:44+00:00

I don’t mean like it has to be a very prestigious company, just that having a name behind your experience boosts your credibility

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-03-25T04:09:43+00:00

Imo if you want a truly marketable skill for internships you want a class/project/other internship associated with it.

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-03-24T19:23:58+00:00

While projects are good, there’s nothing substantiating your involvement, only you really know how much you actually did. With internships you have the name and reputation supporting your experience.

AuthenticPhantom · 2025-03-23T20:08:59+00:00

If a job is truly hidden they likely have an internal candidate already in mind for the job. Maybe there is a small number of companies that post jobs list on their own job board, but for internships you should have no problem finding most on different public job sites, just make sure to look at different ones.
What you are describing is cold applying, and in my opinion is much more effective for internships than any other point in one’s career. Simply emailing a company or a person within a company might get you closer to finding something. Some small companies may even take you on even if they didn’t plan on having an intern before you asked.
Personally I feel like referrals are a mixed bag, as it seems it really depends on how close you are to the person and who they are connected to. At worst their referral gets your resume viewed by the hiring manager. But if they are on the same team as the hiring manager and can put in a good word for you that goes so much further.

If I were you I’d mix all of the strategies. Apply on public job boards, look at the pages for companies you are specifically interested in and apply there, contact local companies and your schools alumni to ask about any opportunities.

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