"No cover letters allowed" but you can "write a blog" about why you want a position? Guess what, that's a cover letter.
Honestly, what I'd be looking for in someone to work with, after raw programming ability, is the ability to use traditional media to communicate well. One of the biggest problems I see at work is the inability to communicate in writing. Being unable or unwilling to write means that every time something needs to be discussed, it involves a conference call. Conference calls suck because they can go on forever, and each participant has to invest the same amount of time. If you have an idea and spend a few hours writing it up, I can read and understand what you're thinking in just a few minutes. Send the writing to a few people, and your 1 hour x 6 people conference call is now 2 hours + 5 minutes * 5 people, saving tons of time.
Making a video and posting it to Facebook and Twitter? Not so much. Everyone that wants to watch it has to focus on that task for the entire length of the video. And that is wasteful and disrespectful of my time.
I agree that communication skills are a great skill to have as a programmer. I'd probably even rank it higher than raw programming ability, personally. (BTW, not all of these startups are only looking to hire developers--a student looking for a marketing internship would probably do very well posting a video.)
I don't think, though, that a cover letter is a great test of these skills. Cover letter templates are abundant and it's very easy for someone to basically copy and paste one in their application. Our team has read every cover letter sent through our site and we noticed some interesting patterns with them. Initially, most students didn't really know what to put in a cover letter and they basically looked like form letters. We created a few resources to educate students on what to write and placed links to them in the application flow. This helped immensely (a lot more than I expected, honestly) and the quality improved.
Still, though, as an employer looking at the resumés and cover letters of students, it's sometimes difficult to distinguish between candidates before doing a phone screen. They have limited experience and skills to highlight. We're trying the blog post / think-of-something-creative application process basically as an experiment to see what students come up with. It's possible that by removing the constraints that students normally perceive on cover letters that something interesting will shake out. You may think it a waste of your time, but you also aren't on the list of companies looking at these candidates :-) Companies participating can opt-in with this expectation in mind.
I have to say, I think this is really unfortunately timed. Just about everyone I know has already selected where they're going to be for the summer. I'll be curious to know if this works out for any of the companies involved.
I actually thought the same thing about the internship cycle last year. At the school I went to, almost every engineer I knew had accepted an internship by December and many had by October. I was actually really surprised to see that many great students from schools that don't have a heavy GOOG/MSFT/AMZN, etc. recruiting presence were looking for internships up through the end of April. Also, we saw a lot of sophomores applying around this time as well.
Startups tend to be less picky about year of graduation and more interested in the capabilities of the student. The best intern I've had was a sophomore who within a month was contributing like a regular member of the team. We had him stay on part-time through the next school year.
I'm pretty confident we'll find good students again this year even in April. If this experiment goes well, we'll probably try another push in the fall to help startups edge in on big company recruiting territory.
I agree, there are plenty of great intern candidates out there even in mid-April, but the cycle is definitely winding down. I'd suspect that the students interviewing now are, on average, not as competitive as the ones who received offers weeks or months ago.
I'd hesitate to stereotype startups' hiring preferences, but encourage students to apply to any company that's remotely interesting. Just like the bigger corporations, there's a huge variance: I've approached some startups about internships only to realize that their singular focus was to bring on full-time engineers ASAP, and worked for others that hired and mentored younger students with great success. It's often impossible to tell without starting a conversation.
I wonder how many other students in the tech industry are facing the same problem I am: I am not living in or near Silicon Valley or any other major city.
Internships seem to be flooding out of the Bay Area/SF, yet no one will take remotes :(
The nearest major city is Minneapolis/St. Paul by a few hours drive.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 21.9 ms ] threadShoot me an email if you'd like to be included in this: kyle@internmatch.com
Honestly, what I'd be looking for in someone to work with, after raw programming ability, is the ability to use traditional media to communicate well. One of the biggest problems I see at work is the inability to communicate in writing. Being unable or unwilling to write means that every time something needs to be discussed, it involves a conference call. Conference calls suck because they can go on forever, and each participant has to invest the same amount of time. If you have an idea and spend a few hours writing it up, I can read and understand what you're thinking in just a few minutes. Send the writing to a few people, and your 1 hour x 6 people conference call is now 2 hours + 5 minutes * 5 people, saving tons of time.
Making a video and posting it to Facebook and Twitter? Not so much. Everyone that wants to watch it has to focus on that task for the entire length of the video. And that is wasteful and disrespectful of my time.
I don't think, though, that a cover letter is a great test of these skills. Cover letter templates are abundant and it's very easy for someone to basically copy and paste one in their application. Our team has read every cover letter sent through our site and we noticed some interesting patterns with them. Initially, most students didn't really know what to put in a cover letter and they basically looked like form letters. We created a few resources to educate students on what to write and placed links to them in the application flow. This helped immensely (a lot more than I expected, honestly) and the quality improved.
Still, though, as an employer looking at the resumés and cover letters of students, it's sometimes difficult to distinguish between candidates before doing a phone screen. They have limited experience and skills to highlight. We're trying the blog post / think-of-something-creative application process basically as an experiment to see what students come up with. It's possible that by removing the constraints that students normally perceive on cover letters that something interesting will shake out. You may think it a waste of your time, but you also aren't on the list of companies looking at these candidates :-) Companies participating can opt-in with this expectation in mind.
Startups tend to be less picky about year of graduation and more interested in the capabilities of the student. The best intern I've had was a sophomore who within a month was contributing like a regular member of the team. We had him stay on part-time through the next school year.
I'm pretty confident we'll find good students again this year even in April. If this experiment goes well, we'll probably try another push in the fall to help startups edge in on big company recruiting territory.
I'd hesitate to stereotype startups' hiring preferences, but encourage students to apply to any company that's remotely interesting. Just like the bigger corporations, there's a huge variance: I've approached some startups about internships only to realize that their singular focus was to bring on full-time engineers ASAP, and worked for others that hired and mentored younger students with great success. It's often impossible to tell without starting a conversation.
Internships seem to be flooding out of the Bay Area/SF, yet no one will take remotes :(
The nearest major city is Minneapolis/St. Paul by a few hours drive.