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Looking for Internship at Google

6 points by curiouscat321 ↗ HN
So here it goes...

I've been interviewing around at large SV companies, but I'm really interested in getting an internship at Google. I haven't been able to get any interest from them, however. I'm from a top CS school with open source experience and a pet project. I've tried contacting recruiters on LinkedIn and still nothing. Does HN have any advice?

Also, I realize that many CS students have a huge Google bias and that HN can have the same. I realize Google shouldn't be an end-all, but it's one of the few large tech companies I haven't had the opportunity to interview with and I really would love to work there.

13 comments

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jfasi
What school are you at, what year are you in, do you have a github you could link to, do you have a resume to point to, what sort of work would you like to be on?

I understand if you don't want to post this stuff online, but you're not giving people much to work with.

curiouscat321
That's a fair point. I'm not entirely comfortable giving that information online, but I'll give as much as I can

I go to a top-2 public university and am in my junior year.

I have a github, but I'd rather not point to it. It contains some smaller projects I've done, as well as contributions to a large Python project and a website I built using Django/MongoDB.

I'm particularly interested in working on Infrastructure/Tools. I'm a huge Python fan and really enjoy backend coding.

argonaut
I'm curious as to why you're not comfortable giving that information online. Your github is already public, presumably, and possibly your resume (through linkedin) as well. That aside, there doesn't seem to be any downside to maintaining a public presence. In fact, there are numerous benefits. I've had recruiters reach out to me through my public presence on the web.
tagabek
In addition to this, there are plenty of people on HN that could throw you opportunities. You may want to reconsider posting your experience.
somerandom
I interviewed for an Internship at Google around September, as far as I know I had applied through the official Google jobs portal and I was contacted a few months later.

I had a fair amount of internship experience at local companies, Github, Bitbucket, a blog, and a well written CV attached. In my mind the most important thing is to be able to prove that you are valuable as a tech intern. Show them that you take the initiative to learn things and write small projects. Put everything up online, even if it isn't complete.

I ended up getting through all the interviews and assigned a project but was dropped in favor of another intern who was more suited to the task. So I'm currently interning at AWS instead.

argonaut
> I ended up getting through all the interviews and assigned a project but was dropped in favor of another intern who was more suited to the task.

Are you saying that Google gave you an offer and later withdrew it? That's what sounds like what happened here. Would really appreciate some clarification, because if true, that's pretty darn serious. Word of that would put a big dent in a company's reputation.

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somerandom
Nah not an offer as such but I was interviewed by a project manager and it all seemed to go well and got to the point of discussing dates for starting and ending with a recruiter. Suddenly I was told someone better was found and they'd contact me if another suitable project arose. They have a funky intern recruitment system.
eshvk
If you are from a top 2 public university, your best bet is to go through campus interviews. Wait for your spring career fair or sign up through your online career portal and apply.
cbhl
IIRC, less than 5% of juniors (3rd-years) in my class got internship offers at Google, and Google goes out of its way to fly recruiters to the University of Waterloo every four months. There were basically only two or three kids that got offers as freshmen (1st-years) / sophomores (2nd-years).

A much higher percentage of seniors (4th-years) get internship/co-op offers, but it's still not huge.

From what I can tell, a lot of recruiting at Google revolves around giving the impression of fairness and due process; trying to hack around it by contacting recruiters directly on LinkedIn sounds like a good way to get black-listed. Apply through their portal at http://www.google.com/about/jobs/students/ ; consider working at other companies (e.g. Facebook) to build up your resume if you don't have prior experience; be open to working at other offices; be open to working in multiple areas of the company (for example, it's really hard to get positions in Chrome and Android unless you're Liam Mcloughlin).

curiouscat321
Out of curiosity, have you heard of anyone being blacklisted? That does worry me quite a bit.
ThePawnBreak
First of all, I'd like to say that you should not view Google as the end all be all of software companies. I was also very interested in interning there, but was a bit dissapointed when I finally managed to get an offer.

How I did it:

I applied to about 30 big software companies in my freshman year. Obviously, nobody outside the country responded, but I managed to get an internship at Adobe Romania, which was a really useful and pleasant experience.

Once you have an internship under your belt, it's a lot easier to get interviews and offers, and also gives you something to talk about in your interviews. So, in my second year I interviewed with Jane Street, Google and Microsoft, and got offers from Google and Microsoft. Google offered me a position in web development, and Microsoft offered me a position in the Operating Systems team, so I chose Microsoft.

My advice would be to find an internship at a company where there isn't so much competition and use your experience to get an internship at Google next year.

Send me an email if you have any questions.