My Life as an Intern: Does Networking Matter? My Story
By: Guy Batton
Tags: Networking, Software Engineering, Inspiration, Software Development, Careers

I was sitting on the couch at home configuring my Debian machine for the thousandth time (Chromebooks don’t make great dev environments) when my wonderfully supportive wife told me that a local company had an internship available. Her search showed that it was posted 6 days ago. All my experience in the job searching world has told me that 6 days is an eternity when a job is posted externally. The statistics say that countless people, who were doubtlessly more qualified than me, have already applied to this position. Plus, I’ve been looking for work off and on for 6 months, and even Walmart wouldn’t get back to me.

Photo by Sven Brandsma on Unsplash. Not my actual couch.

Perhaps you can relate to that.

Of course, the story doesn’t start there. It actually starts two years earlier, before I started back in university, before I got married, and before I knew anything of what I was doing.

Before my wife made the crazy decision to be my girlfriend, I went to visit her at church. She greeted me at the door, and then told me to go find one of her friends. Something important came up that prevented her from sitting next to me, so I sat next to a complete stranger, a business analyst at a local company. Eventually, as long-term relationships tend to go, her friends became my friends, and this mutual friend told me of a job opening on his team.

What Worked and What Didn’t

I could tell you the long story about the rounds of interviews and how I ended up not getting the job, but I will spare you the digression. I will share some of the things I think did and did not work for me.

Ambition

First, showing ambition worked well. I remember spending a lot of time and effort trying to get my name and resume in the hands of as many people over there as possible. Any email address that I could get that belonged to someone related to the position, I used. When I got an email from the recruiter (the one quoted above), I quickly and eagerly responded.This may sound like a no-brainer, but following up really does help.

Beating Impostor Syndrome

Second, not knowing certain technologies didn’t hurt me. At this company, we use XML in virtually everything. I know HTML well enough, but I had never read a single line of XML before I started here. The position I applied for initially customizes existing XML files to fit the client’s needs, and troubleshoots if they mess things up. My not knowing XML did not affect my hireability whatsoever, as far as I can tell. This may be in part because I know HTML, but I think that any good manager will agree that you can teach a developer new tools easily, but teaching them to solve problems like an effective engineer is much more difficult.

In case you’re interested, some of the other buzzwords that they asked about were SQL Server (Microsoft’s brand of the well-known database query language), C# and the .NET framework, and CSS. I have only written a few lines of MySQL, and all of it was in the last 3 months; they didn’t seem to care that I wasn’t experienced in that.

Photo by Max Chen on Unsplash. I recognize this isn’t any of the languages listed above.

The point of that is: don’t focus too much on the buzzwords listed on the job description page. Go ahead and apply. The worst-case scenario is either that they don’t get back to you — in which case you lose nothing — or they ask you about it and you awkwardly say you don’t know. If you can find something else to make an interviewer pay attention to you, focus on that.

Buzzwords don’t matter. Who you are as a person matters.

As a disclaimer: what I read online says that if you don’t have certain buzzwords on your resume, automatic filters will ignore your resume. That may be the case. And if it is, do your best to find a way to send your resume to someone directly. They will likely notice that, see the initiative, and appreciate it.

A totally staged picture from my actual desk. I also drink a lot of coffee.

What You Gain When You Lose

Third, if you don’t get the job, you still gain something. Since my interview with A, the recruiter, I have sent her emails a number of times, including my resume, which she already has, at least twice. Having the contact information for an internal recruiter is always a win. That is, unless you don’t like the picture you get from the company. And if you end up not liking what you find, then you still gain something. There are a lot of tech companies out there, and good number of them have different benefits than others. Personally, I was looking for a company with a lot of flexibility, a laid-back character, and one that has a sense of humor. In other words, I needed to be convinced that I would enjoy working there before I ever set foot in the door.

There are a number of ways to help determine that, and I’ll share some of the things I’ve learned in another post.

Persistence, Persistence, Persistence

Persistence pays off.

The next thing I’ll mention is persistence. You may recall that I said I’d been looking for a position like this for two years. I applied to various positions in this company 3 times before they found the place I belonged. And I tried everything I could to make myself look good each time. In fact, that evening when my wife showed me that job posting that was six days old, I applied, and then immediately sent the email saying “Thank you for applying” to the recruiter. I apologized for sounding pushy, and asked if she would be at the career fair our school holds each semester. I had met her in person at the last one, and we talked briefly then. She said she wouldn’t be there.

On the day of the career fair, I showed up early and made sure I was the first person to talk to the reps from the company. We chit-chatted about things on my resume, and things off my resume; about the weather, how fast the tech world moves, and other pleasantries. I made sure they knew that I had applied to a position already, and hoped to hear back soon.

I can’t take much credit for the job I have, but the one thing I will say is that I was persistent. Persistence pays off.

What You Can’t Control

And that brings me to the last thing. You can’t control what you have no control over. At the end of the day, the job decision isn’t in your hands. You can make a full-time job out of networking and still end up unemployed. But networking does help (more on that in a moment). I said I can’t take credit for much in this process, and that’s true. If my wife hadn’t entertained the annoying kid she met two years ago, I wouldn’t have met the friend (and now coworker) I have. I wouldn’t have had A’s email address to spam her whenever a new position came up. I wouldn’t have even seen the position when it was posted, if it hadn’t been for my wife. Almost everything about this job process was outside of my control, and that’s okay.

At the end of the day, the job decision isn’t in your hands.

You don’t have to control everything to get your dream job. The best that you can do is put a really great foot forward, stick your hand out, and give a solid handshake (or whatever else you do in your culture). The rest is up to providence. It will only hurt you emotionally, physically, and spiritually to worry about what you can’t control. A much better decision is to focus on what you can control, and let the worries take care of themselves.