How I got Software Engineering and Data Science Internships | Computer Science Job Search Part 1 | Tina Huang

0:00Hi everyone. In this video I'll talk about my internship and job seeking experience. As I was doing my master's degree at Penn, my master's degree was called Master's in Computer and Information Technology or MCIT. It's a program for people who don't have a computer science or technical background and are transitioning into computer science. If you haven't already check out the playlist which I'll link above that has more MCIT related videos and information. Please make sure that you subscribe and turn on a notification. Alright, so let's begin this video. So Buffle Your Seat Belt is going to be a wild ride. Let's start from the very beginning. First week of MCIT. I just arrived in Philadelphia, not really familiar with the place and courses just started. And in that first week there was a huge career fair. There was a lot of tech companies especially. So I came in and looked around and thought about all the different companies that I could talk to and just thinking about how much more I can do now. Now that I will have a CS degree probably have a lot more

1:01internship opportunities. Fastboard a couple weeks and I thought I was doing okay. Right? Then I got my first midterm back and I failed 592. My probability test. I'm not the best student but I've also never actually failed a test for midterm before. So this was definitely a first for me and I was very, very stressed out about this. I got like 54% I think. Yeah and that was a lower score I've ever gotten and you know that definitely set me into panic mode and you know really stopped thinking about like in-herm shifts, career affairs and just thought about I need to pass these classes. That pretty much set the tone of that first semester. It felt like I was drinking from a fire hose like with all that information coming and doing assignments preparing for midterm. Yeah that was it was just so much to take in and it was a semester that was full of self-doubt. I thought that maybe I should stop trying to do CS. Go and try to be a doctor again which is what I was doing before.

2:01Now that being a doctor is any easier but I just felt like I couldn't do CS anymore and this is when I just started. And early November rolled around and this is when somebody came up to me and went like, hey Tina how many leak codes did you do? For those of you who don't know, lead code is a website that has a really large collection of software engineering interview questions and it's pretty much like a ritual for all software engineers to go and practice these questions before starting interviewing for both their internships as well as full-time jobs. So you see I didn't actually know what lead code was and since that person was asking me that question that meant that person not only assumed that I was applying for internships that I was actually preparing for internships well I hadn't even thought about internships at that point. So I was like oh God you know I should probably think about internships now. I applied to a bunch of things online and the good thing about doing the CS degree and applying for

3:02software engineering is that you don't actually have to write a cover letter so you just like cast out a huge net of applications and see like who responds to you. And the first wave that was closing up were the banks so I applied to all of the banks that I could find online and two of them got back to me. The first one was Goldman Sachs and the second one was Capital One. The Capital One process started off with them sending me something and pretty much going like hey are you a US citizen and I was like no I'm not a US citizen and they just never responded to me again. So I guess they were only looking for US citizens. The Goldman Sachs one was in late November and they sent me an online screening test where they had a few coding questions that you had to complete. I still hadn't done any lead code at that time but I did go on glass doors and just looking at like all the questions that apparently they do ask and thankfully I found some of the questions that they actually asked me for that round. So I was somehow able to pass. Then around

4:02December they sent me a second round which was a behavioral interview. They sent you a few behavioral questions and you had to talk on video and you just had to answer them. So pro tip for that if a company ever asks you will you ever lie? Will you ever cheat? Will you do something that's illegal or bad? The answer is no. So you know they're like did you if something were to happen and you can't finish your job would you try to take a shortcut? No. If if anybody asks you if you can help them out with something that's confidential then what would you say? You know like that. That is apparently what they were looking for so I was able to go on to the next round. They scheduled that final round where I had to go on site sometime after winter break. So winter break was in December and I was supposed to go in around January. Going into winter break I plan to like you know really do the code and study and read cracking the coding interview which is like the Bible

5:03of cracking the coding interview but none of that actually happened because I was honestly just so burnt out from that first semester keeping up with classes and just like learning everything. I just really needed those few weeks to rest. So I think I did like one lead code and a few pages of cracking the coding interview and that was about it. So then when I was actually supposed to go interview I was like so terrified because I didn't do any of the prep that was supposed to do and I felt like I didn't actually know anything at all. When I came back to campus after a week or so I then went to New York from Philadelphia where I did my final round. Deformat was two interviews back to back and each interview had two interviewers where they would ask you questions. So I'm not even kidding. For three of the interview questions I literally didn't even know what they were talking about at that time because I didn't learn algorithms or data structures yet. So they're

6:04like oh like you have this link list like how would you you know do some things with it. And I was just like what's a link list. For that final interview I think I got along pretty well with the interviewer and we kind of had a chat about my start-up experiences and he asked me a string manipulation question which is something that I actually did know how to do and I was able to do that one fine. After finishing that interview I was pretty sure that I didn't get that job because I essentially failed three of the four interviews and the fourth one was just so happened that he asked me a pretty simple question and I just had a conversation with the interviewer at that time and I didn't hear back for two months. During that time I was still in school and I was started all the classes from my second semester and I was just like applying to more things randomly like basically like whatever there was I just like you know click submit handed in my resume and didn't really think that much about it after. Then after a month or so I got an interview

7:06invite from Blackstone which is another financial institute in New York. This was also a virtual interview but by this time I had already learned some algorithms as well as data structures and I was able to pass that virtual round fine. They told me to go on site for my final round so I took the Amtrak went to New York again and that was a complete disaster. They asked me something about like how do you code an elevator and I was just like I don't know how would you code an elevator. So that didn't go really well and I like for sure knew that I didn't get Blackstone. And then I came back you know still doing school also applied just randomly to more things I applied to so many things like hundreds of different applications I sent out. And then so after two months of not hearing anything at all I got that off of Goldman Sachs but I was so so grateful that I was able to get it. Since I got that offer I didn't apply to more things but remember how I said that I was applying to so many things before I then got an interview invite for Amazon and this was also

8:10the first virtual round so I figured like minus wall just give it a go right. So I did the first round and I managed to pass that thankfully I was learning about like all the things that they were actually testing us on for the interviews at that time. This was in March of 2019 and except for what we were learning in school I actually didn't touchly code at all. Amazon only has two rounds so first they do that virtual screening round and then they go and just do that fight around also online. This one would be like video with one of the employees at Amazon. For my final round the interview asked me six questions. The first three of them were really easy questions that you could have done without actually taking algorithms war data structures. For question four and five I was actually just really really lucky. They were connected and those two questions were exactly what were in my algorithms homework that week. So because

9:10of that I was able to get those questions right and for the last question I like literally had no idea how to do it and I think I just like made something up. Apparently that was good enough to get through and I also got an offer for Amazon. In case you're interested click the video above which will go into more detail about how I chose between my internship offer from Amazon and the one from Goldman Sachs. So long story short I chose Goldman Sachs and I did my internship at Goldman Sachs because they let me do stuff that was more data science related which is what I was more interested in.