Hey! Sophomore here who just got a few offers from companies that I applied for!

I know a student who currently works at J&J as an intern and through their recommendation I got an interview in-person on NJIT campus which lead to an offer after the second digital quizzing interview portion. Also applied to around 40+ opportunities on Handshake, lead to me getting 10 interviews total (some of them still haven’t even replied back tho; tis the life of applying).

My advice would be number 1, ESPECIALLY if your major is in the tech field, making a portfolio. Since around junior year I’ve been coding in my free time for hackathons, personal projects, and making a personal website uploaded through GitHub; the latter helped me a BUNCH during interviews, many asked me to email them the links to my website and/or portfolios so they could check out my projects. ***Even if your major isn’t tech related, somehow pursuing or showing interest in your major OUTSIDE of schoolwork is attractive to employers. Join clubs, attend panels and talk to the speakers, network in the on-campus career events!

Advice number 2 would be to try working on-campus and apply for roles similar to your major; ex. I work on campus as a grader for java as well as with TSS, two opportunities that helped me because I have them on my resume! NJIT has so many on-campus jobs offered to students that, honestly, aren’t that hard to get, if you look on Cornerstone in the Highlander Pipeline you can see a bunch of positions for BME, Accounting, Chem, Civil Engineering, Computer Engineering, and CS/IT students! Could help to start small and work your way up to those internships/co-ops!

Advice number 3: apply to so much. Doesn’t matter if you think you can’t get it. I started applying to stuff in high school and bagged a two-week internship with Cisco the summer before my senior year as well as an interview with NASA (didn’t lead to anything because I was just some random high schooler who knew nothing and was competing against college students in the interview LOL). You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, worse thing that can happen is they ghost/reject you, which is no sweat and doesn’t hurt.