Tech internships in the USA: how do you gain experience?

The USA remains the world leader in tech, and an internship there adds weight to a resume and can be an excellent start to a career both in America and beyond it. In an earlier article we went through the case for and against remote internships in America. Here we concentrate on improving your chances of getting one and on how the selection process works.

Why internships pay off for companies

A great many people treat an internship as the intermediate step between studying and receiving an offer in tech. And it is usually the only right one, since not every company is willing to take someone with no experience on real projects. We understand why internships matter to students, but why do they pay off for companies? There are several reasons:

• Fresh ideas. New specialists more often hold current knowledge and fresh views on technology, which lets a company adopt innovative solutions and stay competitive.
• Building a talent pool. An internship is a kind of probation period during which an employee's potential and their fit with the company's culture can be assessed. That lets a firm offer permanent work to the best candidates with more confidence, and reduces what it later spends on searching and training.
• Lower costs. In the early stages interns are paid a token amount or work unpaid, which lets a company save budget while it looks for talent to bring on staff.
• Developing the internal culture. Working with people who have just entered the market encourages an exchange of experience, brings in new working methods and keeps professional standards high — and it motivates existing employees by creating a competitive environment.
• Strengthening the employer's reputation. By offering a chance to gain valuable experience, a company demonstrates its social responsibility and its willingness to invest in the development of the country's tech sector. That attracts talented candidates and strengthens the company's standing with market regulators.

From that it follows that selecting interns differs little from hiring properly in tech. It is a kind of simulator, a chance to test yourself before you go out to look for a first job in earnest. But as with vacancies, there is competition, and it matters to do everything within your power to win the most attractive internships. So here is a step-by-step plan that will improve your chances considerably.

How the selection process works

It varies by company, but it closely resembles hiring an employee. A multi-stage approach lets a tech company assess a specialist's professional preparation as well as their ability to work remotely. Both hard and soft skills matter here. There is no need to be alarmed, but there is every reason to prepare. That said, selecting interns is considerably more forgiving than hiring for a specific position, and it usually consists of these stages:

1. Receiving the application and a preliminary review of the resume — recruiters read the resume, cover letter and portfolio. The emphasis is usually on the technical skills the internship calls for.
2. Online testing and a technical exercise — to assess your level you are usually asked to complete an exercise or an online test. It might be a programming task, an algorithmic problem or solving a real problem — nothing hard, usually something quite basic.
3. An initial screening interview — with an HR specialist or recruiter, to establish your motivation and assess your communication. For a remote internship it also matters to check how ready a candidate is to organise their own workspace and stay disciplined without supervision.
4. A technical interview — with specialists at the company, whether developers, architects or team leads, usually to go through the exercise or check the basic hard skills online.
5. An interview on soft skills and remote working — an optional stage, checking self-organisation, communication and the ability to work in a team.
6. Final discussion and decision — after every stage, HR and the technical department gather feedback and decide. The best candidates are offered an internship, sometimes with a discussion of terms, duration and possible employment afterwards.

How to prepare your application

Which raises the question of how to prepare in advance and approach the process as seriously as possible. As with preparing for an ordinary job interview, what helps is presenting yourself well and conveying your goals clearly:

1. Write a strong resume. A good resume is a short one. Describe the hard skills you have and add relevant experience — you may not yet have worked on a real tech project, but perhaps you took part in hackathons or competitions, or practised on test data. Include everything relevant to the internship.
2. Write a covering letter — your chance to stand out. Keep it short and personalised. Research the company: its values, the projects it runs, which of them you see yourself being part of. Focus on the value you can bring and the experience you hope to come away with.
3. Prepare for the technical interview — read up on how technical interviews go and work on your weak points. YouTube, forums and search engines will help you prepare.
4. Build a portfolio — projects of your own, even practice ones, are a real advantage. Put them on GitHub or build a personal site to hold your work, which matters particularly for UX/UI designers.
5. Be active in the professional community — everyone wants people who take the initiative. Hackathons, open source projects and technical conferences all count in your favour.

How to improve your chances of being hired afterwards

If you do not immediately secure a place at the company, do not despair. Try to keep in touch with your colleagues once the internship ends. Do not hesitate to ask for references or letters of recommendation, both from managers and from the people on the team you worked with. In American corporate culture it is also customary to write a letter of interest thanking the company for the opportunity, describing your experience during the internship and expressing the hope of working together again should a suitable vacancy appear.

Subscribe to the company's vacancies — and better still, build good connections during the internship. Very often, particularly at large companies, candidates are found through a referral programme, that is, on the recommendation of an existing employee. So avoid conflict and leave a positive impression not only on management but among your colleagues.

Internships at PASV

And if you want to make this whole process considerably simpler for yourself, we have good news. At PASV we will not only teach you a leading tech profession from scratch but give you the chance of an internship on current, high-technology projects in the USA. Everything will be as close as possible to how work actually goes at the largest American tech companies. You will work in a team and gain distinctive experience under our mentors' careful guidance. Best of all, it can be done entirely online, with the flexibility to choose how much time you give it.

The internship is included in the price of every tech course at PASV, so there is no selection process to worry about. What is more, once you complete it you will have real work experience to put on your resume. We will confirm it with all the necessary documentation — background and reference checks — so that a future employer has no doubt about your qualifications.

And if you are already an experienced tech specialist unable to find work in the USA, we offer you the chance to take an internship on our projects. For anyone who is not a student of the school this is a paid service, but in return you get practical experience on an American project along with valuable references for your future employer.