Bible Of Internships - How to find a great job at Google, Facebook, Microsoft?

If the title sounds familiar, this is for you! I wrote this blog post as a tribute to the great blog post which helped me very much a few months ago. After dozens of interviews and hours on phone I decided to publish this post
By: Rafał Bielenia is a student of Computer Science
 
April 7, 2012 - PRLog -- Bible Of Internships -  How to find a great job at Google, Facebook, Microsoft?

If the title sounds familiar, this is for you! I wrote this blog post as a tribute to the great blog post which helped me very much a few months ago.
After dozens of interviews and hours on the phone, I decided to share my knowledge and create this, not so short, but very enriching post.
So, have you ever imagined a situation where you receive job offers from Google, Facebook and Microsoft?
And... you have to reject most of them because you just cannot be in several places at once? 
For sure you did. I wanted to know how this feels, so I did some research. Do you want to know more? Read on.

The core business of Codility is strictly about recruiting: we help billion-dollar companies as well as startups to hire coders. But we are programmers ourselves and we have been on the other side of the table too. I was in internship interviews with all the companies mentioned above. In preparation for the interviews I talked to my older university colleagues who were internship veterans, who has been to all possible internship already and even rejected some offers just because they have grown bored of spending holidays this way. I realized that I have a great opportunity to sum everything up and to create a wrap-up for internship wannagets.
 

Stages of recruitment 
 
It is important to understand that every company has a slightly different recruitment process. Sometimes you have to wait one month for the interview, sometimes a day. Sometimes you just have to send your CV, sometimes it is better to use a backdoor. Nevertheless most of them follow a pattern that looks something like that:
   1.   You realize that the firm is recruiting interns and you want to work for them or you are contacted directly by a recruiter (recruiters will hunt for you in some places, e.g. programming contests).

   2.   You send a CV/resume.

   3.   Your CV is noticed. (This is usually the last step for most candidates → your CV isn't impressive enough. But remember, the reason is not because you are not impressive: it's because you are too lazy to learn how to write a good CV.)

   4.   If you obtain the honor ;) of being contacted by a recruiter, you will usually get some kind of pre-screening task, for example, a simple project to do at home, an on-line test (Codility!) or the like.

   5.   Phone interviews. (Both technical and behavioral questions. People generally underestimate the importance of behavioral questions, don't make this mistake!)

   6.   Possible on-site interview.

   7.   Offer.

   8.   Great internship.



Secondly, you have to be good with computers, but you don't have to know everything. This is just an internship, not a senior engineer job. A very common mistake is a lack of self-confidence. Many people say:
“An internship in Microsoft? I don't have a chance. Maybe next year.”
What? Of course you don't have a chance, because you don't try!
Stick this motto over your bed: “A quitter never wins and a winner never quits.”
Try, try, try until you win. On the other hand if ∀ε > 0 your_skill
End
Source:Rafał Bielenia is a student of Computer Science
Email:***@codility.com Email Verified
Tags:Internship, Programming, Programmer, Internship Advices, Google, MICROSOFT, Codility, Programming Skills
Industry:IT and Software
Location:London City - London, Greater - England
Subject:Executives
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