Interviewing for a part time internship for Entry Level IT. I am a full time student Comp Sci major and wanna go into networking, servers, security, so hopefully this gets me my foot in the door. I am a terrible soft skills person and really nervous. My friends told me to print out my resume and transcripts, I will surely do that. Anybody got anything else to suggest?
Update: I got the position! I honestly didn’t even prepare for it, didn’t even know what the company did. The comment that talked about learning to search things up was right on, they asked me what I would do if I didn’t know how to do something. I answered “looking things up, asking others, and consult documentation.” The company seemed really cool and is structured pretty much like Valve Corp in that they wanted jacks of all trades and it was company owned.
Thank you for all the helpful advice. It definitely helped me out, and hopefully, it helps others out as well.
Ask what ‘what success looks like’ at said company.
If the interviewer brings up personal life/trying to get to k ow you stuff be totally willing to expand on your interests. The interviewer is filtering k personal skills. Simply being able to talk about a hobby is a form of bridge building between people they seem to value. Create a script. Imagine a person asks you about your free time, have conversations in your head with the fictional person.
Do the same for talking points related to your resume. Everything you put on there is a potential question they’ll ask. For example, put that you have experience with security and they are you to ask about what you’ve done or know regarding that. Pre-write an answer.
My best advice is thus: pretend to be a jacksss gatekeeper and read your application from that perspective. Write down your critique. In your head argue against that and write it down. Memorize those talking points.
My tip.is always to remember that this is not yours to loose, its just an interview like a 1000 others you’ll have. If you don’t get it you didn’t, try again tomorrow. When I think like that I’m usualy more relax and don’t over talk.
Don’t try to BS your way through answers; if you don’t know, let them know that but also tell them how you’d go about getting that information.
Relax, show a willingness to learn and you’ll be ok.
I got my start working for university IT and made it all the way to a CS Ph.D. and into industry.
Congrats! Welcome to the field. You’ll be slinging ones and zeros in no time.
I have no idea what slinging ones and zeros mean but thanks
Moving bits of data: networking.
Oh I guess. I just thought it was really broad. Could’ve been literally anything computer related and even circuits related.
I mean, it could also be data recovery, malware thwarting, etc. Working with digital devices. It’s just a computer thing.
It’s okay to be nervous. You’re not a CONfidence man.
How did it go?
I updated the post. It went really well. I got the job. I kept asking a bunch of questions and it wasn’t too hard to do that since the company is really interesting since they dive into so many products.
Congrats!
Good luck. Nice to see happy news here.
Go to the bathroom before you go into the place.
Hell yea, glad you got it. I have my third interview at a software company later today, here’s hoping.
Networking/security is some really neat stuff, I have dabbled as I used to work doing systems stuff, but moved to robotics automations after that. See if you can get your new employer interested in paying a bit for you to get certs at some point (often if you bring it up that you want some cert, they might be interested in putting some percentage of money towards helping you get it), Network+ and those other Cisco certs are pretty sought after as I understand it and could definitely help progress your career.
Also welcome to the industry!
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Force yourself to smile and say something f like “good to meet you” or “thanks for seeing me” . Soft skills come naturally to some, but the tricks can be learned by anyone and are based on manners.
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Have a couple of anecdotes about your approach to problem solving. Doesn’t matter what they are, there is no right or wrong answer, just have your approach ready in your head.
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If its help desk, say you like helping people. One line i used a long time ago, was something like “I am quite shy on the telephone, but i actually helping people with technical problems “. It’s just keeping it real, a credible .
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Consider de-emphasising your technical ambitions. They’ll have a dozen people saying they want to be a CCIE or data scientists or whatever the current flavour is.
Instead, I’d with “I’m doing well on with compsci degree, I don’t have any difficulties with the technical aspects, but I really want to see how my skills fit into a company, and make a start on understanding the realities of a business environment “
They want some one they can worth with, they can worth with almost anyone , but they won’t want to work with an “unknown”, so the more you can give - no matter who you are - the better.
You got it.
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Not in your industry, but I’ve interviewef many, many…too many people who were looking for entry level positions and although I had the standard hot sheet of corp. questions, what I was looking for was how this person would fit into the team, if they were willing to learn (demonstrated or had examples), and if they had a good personality/traits.
Do not beat yourself up if you do not get the position, I have turned down people because they were better than what I was offering and knew it would not work out if I hired them then.
Ask where this position may lead to and what skill sets you’re expected to gain from the experience in an internship role.
Good luck.
Wait you turned down people because they were too good?
It happens, you know they won’t last because they will take the first opportunity to fit thier skill level and leave you high n dry. It’s overqualified.
STAR. For every question try to give a situation, task, action and result which came from you personally. E.g. situation, someone was manually copying data from an online portal every month. As a task, you’re asked to write some code which scrapes an API, and you defined the task via docs and planned tests. Then as an action you worked on it for a few days, and the result was the company didn’t need to manually spend a few days per month doing it, freeing up people to do more exciting things.
It shows you understand the problem and know how to go about solving it in a professional way.
Talk about your interests. Show a passion for your hobbies outside of work/the industry. Relate those passions to your goals within the industry. Generally just be interested and they’ll find you interesting. You got this!
