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A Programmer's Guide to Job Searching and Internships as a Student

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A Programmer's Guide to Job Searching and Internships as a Student

This post shares my personal job search journey as a student, covering part-time work, internships, and graduate programs, along with extracurricular activities I believe help secure an offer before graduation. Since all of this preparation happened while I was a student, I decided to consolidate everything into a single post.

First, a disclaimer:

  1. I graduated at the beginning of COVID-19. The job market then was likely less competitive than it is now, reshaped by the impact of AI.
  2. I had no visa concerns. If you lack permanent residency, you may need to do more preparation on top of what is described here. Keep going!
  3. Luck matters, but it is not within your control. Sometimes you can be fully prepared and still miss an opportunity — that is not your fault; it is a matter of market timing. Stay confident.
  4. My target role was Software Development Engineer (SDE). I have limited knowledge of the currently popular Data Scientist path.
  5. The content here represents my personal views only and has no connection to any company I have worked for, past or present.

1. How to Land Your First Internship or Part-Time Job

During university, I primarily earned income through three channels, listed from hardest to easiest:

  1. University Course Tutor [Strongly Recommended]

    • Overview: Professors are usually very busy, so they recruit strong students who have already taken the course to help with tutorials, workshops, marking assignments, and grading.
    • How to find it: Watch your university's job board — positions are typically posted before the semester starts. You will need at least a High Distinction (HD) average to be competitive. If your grades are strong, you can also email professors directly to ask about future tutoring opportunities.
    • Why it is worth it: In my view, tutoring is the highest-value part-time job available to university students.
      • Strong resume signal: HR recognises this experience highly. It demonstrates: 1) solid domain knowledge; 2) strong communication and mentoring ability — both critical in the workplace.
      • Good pay: My workshop rate was AUD 50/hour; small-group tutorials paid AUD 120/hour.
      • Soft skill development: You quickly discover that communication and teaching ability are just as important as technical skill in a programmer's career. The industry strongly embraces mentor/mentee culture.
      • Networking: Building a good relationship with professors can unlock a second career path.
      • Flexible hours: Generally not subject to the strict weekly hour limits of student visas.

  2. Research Assistant (RA) for a Professor

    • Overview: This opportunity depends heavily on the professor and on timing. The work primarily involves helping with projects and writing various types of code — ranging from front-end development and experiment simulations to data visualisation, back-end implementation, and research paper support.
    • How to find it: The approaches vary widely, including but not limited to:
      • Following your university's computer science community channels, where professors sometimes post recruitment notices.
      • Watching for Summer Research School announcements — you may be kept on after the programme ends.
      • If you excelled in a course, proactively contact the professor (since the course is over, there is no grade at risk — be bold).
    • Advantages:
      • Gain real project experience and learn from professors about cutting-edge topics. Professors can also serve as references during background checks.
      • High HR recognition — it is a paid, formal position.

  3. Contractor at a Consulting Firm

    • Overview: These opportunities are relatively rare because companies usually hire experienced professionals from the market directly.
    • My experience: I was lucky. During a hackathon hosted by a consulting firm, our team pushed hard to build a product prototype, and I later received a contractor offer from that company — my first formal job.

2. Large Company Internships

Typically, during the long summer holiday in the year before graduation (November to February), large companies open internship programmes. This internship experience could earn you your first full-time offer and, at a minimum, will make your resume far more competitive in subsequent applications.

Note: This path generally requires applicants to have permanent residency (PR). Students on a student visa may consider using this period to apply for internships at large Chinese tech companies instead.

Timeline:

  1. February–March of the year before graduation: Large companies open applications for summer internships (November–February).
  2. June–July: Companies extend offers and conduct team matching.
  3. November: Internship begins.
  4. February (following year): Internship ends. If you perform well, you may receive your first full-time offer in March.

Company List:

  1. High-Frequency Trading (HFT) firms: Optiver, IMC, Akuna, etc.
  2. Tech companies: Google, Atlassian, Amazon, Canva, Rokt, etc.
  3. Major consulting firms and banks.

How to Prepare:

  1. Grind LeetCode / HackerRank: The two platforms are not very different — consistent practice is what matters.
  2. Build up experience: Tutoring, research assistant work, and part-time jobs all strengthen your resume.
  3. Maintain strong grades: When candidates are otherwise similar, a high GPA remains a meaningful differentiator.

If you land an internship, congratulations! Use the time to absorb everything like a sponge: the tech stack, company culture, team collaboration norms, hiring process, interview standards, and architecture and design documents for well-known internal systems. Talk to colleagues and deliver good work. Everything you learn can be taken with you when you leave.

Also watch for Google Australia's STEP Program, a special internship for second-year undergraduates. The interview primarily tests LeetCode-style problem-solving.

In my own case, when I finished my master's degree (I enrolled in the master's because I hadn't found a job after my bachelor's...), my background included:

  1. Two hackathon experiences
  2. Two years of tutoring computer science courses
  3. One research assistant (RA) position with a professor
  4. One contractor role at a consulting firm
  5. An Atlassian internship with a return offer
  6. A thesis on Kubernetes research

Yet this resume was screened out by Canva without even reaching an interview. That hit me hard and triggered a lot of anxiety.

I then reached out to a senior contact who referred me internally for AWS's graduate programme. In preparing for the interviews, since my previous experience was largely back-to-back technical rounds, I was less familiar with the process at non-pure-tech large companies. My preparation included:

  1. Get a referral: Absolutely, definitely seek an internal referral. It can get you past the online assessment (OA) entirely.
  2. Grind LeetCode: Labuladong's algorithm cheat sheet is excellent for categorising problem types.
  3. Prepare behavioural questions: Even without formal work experience, you can draw on team project experiences from university — the scenarios, your role, and what you learned — to build your answers. For AWS's behavioural interviews, I wrote 10 short stories and practised answering different questions using them. The STAR method (Situation-Task-Action-Result) is highly recommended for structuring responses.
  4. Review your projects: Revisit the architecture of projects you have built and think about what could be improved or optimised.
  5. Mock interviews: Practise with friends or peers. I also used interviewing.io, paying for anonymous mock interviews with senior engineers (expensive — roughly USD 100+ per session).

On a "nothing to lose" basis, I also applied to Alibaba's standard recruitment and their "Alibaba Star" programme... For Chinese autumn recruitment, memorising standard technical Q&A (八股文) is also key.

Summary

Job searching after graduation is an anxiety-prone process that requires long-term planning. It does not begin in your final semester — it should start the moment you enrol. If I were to plan my university timeline again:

  1. Year 1: Maintain a high GPA, start grinding LeetCode. (Even if you have taken an algorithms course, that does not mean you can solve LeetCode problems — it is a test-taking skill, and the earlier you start, the better.) Look for opportunities to join competitive programming at your university.
  2. Year 2: Keep an eye on the Google STEP Program, Optiver internships, and Summer School Research Opportunities.
  3. Year 3 (or Year 2 of a three-year degree): Focus on summer internship programmes at major tech companies.
  4. Final year / graduation year: Begin your formal job search and apply broadly.

Throughout your entire university life, continue to:

  1. Actively participate in competitions — hackathons and competitive programming.
  2. Contribute to open-source projects. involutionhell is a great opportunity.
  3. Seek tutoring positions.
  4. Pursue research assistant opportunities with professors.
  5. Competitive programming results are a major differentiator if you can achieve them.
  6. Expand the scope of team assignments: Don't just meet the minimum requirements — treat them as opportunities to learn new technologies. For example, try using cloud services or building your own Kubernetes cluster for the back end; use modern front-end frameworks like React or Next.js; or integrate a large language model (LLM) into your application.
  7. Continuously explore how to collaborate with AI in your coding work. AI is fundamentally reshaping the industry.

All of these efforts demonstrate the following qualities from different angles, increasing your chances of passing resume screening:

  1. Genuine passion for technology and the ability to learn independently.
  2. Technical competence validated by external recognition.
  3. Strong communication, collaboration, and interpersonal skills.

Further Reading

Vote for the topics you would like covered next:

  1. Sydney IT company interview styles / preparation strategies
  2. Programmer career tracks (front-end/back-end, mobile, DevOps/SRE, large language models, comparing large vs. small companies)
  3. Workplace promotion and personal growth

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A Programmer's Guide to Job Searching and Internships as a Student1. How to Land Your First Internship or Part-Time Job2. Large Company Internships3. Graduate Job SearchSummaryFurther Reading