How I landed a software engineering internship at Citadel

all right I'm just gonna I'm just gonna start this is the first video I'm ever making on this camera welcome to how I landed a software engineering internship at Citadel uh just as a background I'm not the crazy cracked like math encoding God that you might think I am um of course I perform well with my CS classes but you know that's about it uh I am a junior X major at Berkeley so for those of you who don't know that is electrical engineering and computer science honestly I think it was the interviews that mattered a lot and and less so my background I have two previous software engineering internships the first one was in summer 2021 I worked at a startup called simplified jobs and then last summer so 2022 I was working at Uber and I'm actually working there right now as well but I can get into that in another video if you want to learn more about what I did during those internships I'll put my resume up in the video or in the description so uh yeah let's just get into the timeline you don't need a big name school or a bunch of previous chips get your foot in the door because Citadel actually sends you or sends everyone in OA which is what we call an online assessment which is basically a virtual interview it's not proctored you just kind of code it out and based on how well you do on that that decides whether or not you move forward in the interview process so here's the full timeline on the screen the details and the exact dates are there but um just to summarize it the whole timeline took like 14 weeks for total technical interviews and two behavioral interviews um I actually had to do the final round twice because the first time around the hiring manager didn't want me or for that specific team so that's the timeline take a look at it pause the video but honestly I'm mainly making this video to give interview tips because I think that's where a lot of the pitfalls come I think interviews and your ability to interview well will make or break your ability to land internships that will help boost your career so uh yeah so as you guys probably already know software engineering interviews are usually about an hour they kind of start out with a quick introduction with your interviewer and then you jump right into the coding problem and then after that they give you know a few minutes for you to ask questions so I actually thought my technical performance on at least like half of my technical interviews I definitely needed a few tips or hints from the interviewers so I definitely didn't like score perfectly on the coding portions for these interviews I did not solve the problem instantly there were definitely a few cases where I wouldn't have solved it without like extra help from the interviewers probably the biggest tip that I can give for interviews is your ability to woo the interviewer is more important then your ability to solve the problem at hand so let me explain you need to convince the interviewer of three things one is that you're a real person whose world is not just coding you're not a coding monkey right you live a real life you have things to do outside of school outside of coding two you're a great teammate that isn't afraid to ask for help if you ask interviewers for help it's not a bad look for you if anything it helps you out because no one wants to work with someone that isn't going to ask for help when they need it right and three you actually care about getting to know your interview or at least you know pretend that you care one of the biggest things that you need to avoid coming off as is someone that knows the answer to everything or thinks that they know the answer to everything because you really don't of course you need to show that you're knowledgeable about software engineering to some extent but it's impossible to know the answers to every question that is thrown at you Lee code or not so how do you do this right how do you show the three things that I was talking about earlier we'll just go kind of chronologically throughout the interviews so from the very beginning try to show or pretend that you actually want to get to know the person on the other side of the screen so this starts from the beginning and lasts throughout the whole interview right when they ask you how you're doing don't just say something like good how about you you want to add a little bit of spice to it you know what did you eat for breakfast are you getting absolutely destroyed on your operating systems project is it final season are you hanging on or are you breezing through your exams these are all things that I've said before in previous interviews and I think they have a small but non-negligible impact on how the interviewer perceives you as a person these small details make you seem like a real person and not just like Elite code solving robot or someone that only cares about getting the problem right this is what is going to differentiate you from the others and compelled interviewer to give positive feedback about you especially because they will see you more as a real person as a student that has a life you know during the coding question you want to think out loud so communicate everything that's going going through your mind are you thinking about using DFS or BFS a q or a Min Heap iterative or recursive what's the reasoning behind all of these right this pertains only to the technical portion but you need to show that you are a great teammate so you want to be someone that doesn't like to just handle things solo you're not afraid to ask for help it looks especially bad if you're staring at the problem you're not saying anything and you don't know what to do next and you don't have the confidence to ask the interviewer for help kind of confirm throughout the interview like oh I'm thinking about using BFS to solve this problem does that sound does that make sense to you ask that to the interviewer and that will definitely boost your interview performance especially when the interviewer reviews how you did on the technical portion of the interview after the coding question you've got to ask a few questions about their work life about what they do really get to know your interviewer here so show that you care about them ask them to talk more about what they do at their company what does their you know day-to-day look like what is one of their favorite parts of the company maybe what's something that isn't related to their work that they enjoy about the company and as your interviewer answers these questions try to you know empathize with them try to relate some of it to a part of your own life and really just show that you're making a connection with this person even if you in reality have like no interest in connecting with them because they're much more likely to give positive feedback about you if you make a genuine connection with them um and at the end you know thank the interviewer for their time from my personal experience like talking to full-time employees at my internships like they absolutely hate doing these interviews a lot of them are only there because they have to be and it's up to you to make it enjoyable for them if you can manage to make the interview enjoyable they'll feel appreciated for the time that they spent on you and of course they'll write you some positive feedback that's what gets you through these interviews and on to the next round all this advice that I just gave honestly applies to behavioral interviews as well not just technical interviews it maybe even matters more right because behavioral interviews are where everything is based on who you are as a person and like the past experiences that you've had I keep saying that you need to show that you're a real person but the reason why I keep saying that is because I can't emphasize that enough that's what's going to get you through these interviews you know a lot of these tips come kind of naturally if you're just already a people person I consider myself to actually be mostly an introvert since fresh from New York though I've put kind of a lot of effort into meeting new people learning how to make conversations with just about anyone even people that you have absolutely nothing in common with this is something that you can and you should work on daily it's not going to help you out in just interviews it'll help you out in all parts of life I'm also doing an internship at Uber right now um I'm planning on making a day in the life video for that and then of course I'm working at Citadel later this summer in New York so yeah if you have any questions feel free to drop them in the comments if there's demand for another type of video on my you know experience at Berkeley how to network resume tips I'd be down to make a video for those too so yeah thanks for watching everyone damn

Channel: Hanson Li

Views: 25,244

Keywords: citadel, swe, internship, interview, advice, software, engineering

Id: JzxLDZs2Csk

Length: 7min 47sec (467 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 13 2023