Getting an internship at BYU-Idaho

Finding the internship

First, There are a few points each semester where a few companies (almost always family search and the church) will come do interviews for internships.

1. The biggest thing you can do to prepare is to build projects and publish them. Having something live in production is a big signal to people looking for interns, and will also put you at the top 10% of students since it's fairly uncommon for students to have things in production.
2. It's dumb, but memorize leetcode algorithms following the patterns in this video, and that will also give you a huge advantage
3. Talk to people. This one is especially difficult for software developers, because we're naturally reclusive, but you'd be surprised how much of a difference it can make to get to know everyone you can on campus. Going to the on campus societies, and doing the hackathons is another big win because you get to know people, especially by doing the hackathons.

The last piece of advice I'd give is that you want to do your internship at whatever company you want to work at after you graduate. Many companies will not hire anyone to a developer position who wasn't first an intern. For those who do hire people that weren't first interns, the company will almost always choose an intern that worked for them instead of any other candidates.
Basically, go big, and play the game.

1. know the right people - get the interview
2. beat the interview - get the internship, and often later the job

In my experience following the patterns in The Two Hour Job Search is what's going to build the systems to get the word out, and knowing the right people is how you'll actually find a job.

BYU-I has a class called Professional Readiness where you read The Two Hour Job Search and I took it a little half-heartedly. I later regretted that because the STAR, TIARA, and other methods learned might've landed me a job earlier in my search had I prepared better.

I wish that I had done 1 leetcode/week and 1 TIARA/STAR each week. Had I done that throughout all of college, I would've done so much better during the job interviews I've had over the last few months

Schedule

I tried doing a bunch of leetcode the two days leading up to an interview, and it 100% didn't work. You MUST do leetcode at least once a week, but preferably once a day, for months leading up to the interview. This is crucially important.

Doing the Informational Interview

Follow the principles in The Two Hour Job Search

Resources

The Two Hour Job Search
Leetcode - you don't need to pay, they have enough free problems. There's a good list here.
Leetcode mastery video
Me - if you want to get to know people feel free to reach out, and I can try and connect you with other students I've known. [email protected]