#and it was a personalized email not an automated rejection. i've gotten automated emails that are similar

[wickedhawtwexler]

things are picking up in my job search hell yeahhh

[realtalk-princeton]

Currently a sophomore COS major. I had a software engineering intership last summer, couple of projects, great gpa, and lots of relevant ECs but it's still been really hard finding an internship for next summer. I've applied to so many places online (along with career fair) and I've just been getting automated rejections or no response. It feels like recruiting season is ending I haven't gotten anywhere. Do companies usually respond to apps later in the year and I'm just worrying too much?

Response from Sushi:

Looks like you have a great resume! It’s strange to me why you wouldn’t be passing the resume screens. It’s like peak recruiting season though, and everyone’s dropping their resume online so some companies either just ghost everyone or just reject everyone who doesn’t match their online computer screening for certain words/phrases on their resume. Make sure your resume is parse-able in PDF format (so like if you have two columns, it doesn’t read straight through both columns as if it was reading a one column resume).

Here are some tricks to pass the resume screen:

1) Do you know of any recruiters from the specific companies that you are interested in? If I didn’t hear back from online applications, I sent this email to a recruiter:

Hi [Recruiter Name],

My name is [Name], I am a Princeton University student, and I am interested in interning as a software engineer at [Company] next summer. I have formerly interned at [Former Work Experience]. To this purpose, I am reaching out to forward you my resume. Let me know if you would like to learn more about me. Thank you for your consideration.

Best regards,

[Name]

This usually led me to a response from the company; sometimes moving onto the interview stage, and sometimes a response saying that they weren’t moving forward with my application. Either way, closure was nice to get.

2) Do you know anyone who worked at the companies you are interested in last year? They can probably refer you, which ensures that your resume is seen by at least one person. 

3) Do you know anyone from the company you interned at last year who can potentially help you in the recruiting process or give you tips of places to apply to or refer you to places? Take advantage of all available resources that you have.

Lastly, don’t worry! Yes, companies do respond to apps later in the year. Many people interview throughout December and January and receive offers around February. I’m not sure that this was that helpful, though. Submit if you have follow up questions! Roonil should also add to this.

Response from Roonil Wazlib:

The only things I have to add to Sushi’s great response are a) apply to Google EP and Microsoft Explore if you haven’t already, much easier to get noticed because you aren’t competing with juniors and if you end up there, you’ll have an “in” with a great tech company and b) if you don’t have the name of a Princeton specific recruiter, my friend would go on LinkedIn and find a recruiter at the company (might not even be the Princeton recruiter, that’s fine - just search up [company name] university recruiter LinkedIn) and find their email/LinkedIn them asking about their application or if they could be redirected to the Princeton recruiter or someone more suited to answer their question. This wasn’t a flawless method but worked a good amount of the time and is better than nothing!