How To Get Experience As a Computer Science Student

So, you are in your sophomore year at college or senior year, graduation is nearby. I have a question for you, do you have any practical field experience? If the answer is no, then get to work, now. I cannot stress the importance of having practical field experience as a Computer Science major. Because when potential employers look at your resume, they wanna see that you know your stuff, but also apply it to a real-world scenario. I know by this point, a lot of students are going ballistics. Like: “Felix, I have no experience, I graduate next year, I am screwed”. Slow down, my friend.

Here I will share practical ways that you can gain experience as a Computer Science student in the field of choice, whereas, it’s web, mobile, development or even research.

Go on internships

Instead of using the summer to binge watch Netflix, wake up at 3:00 PM every day, I have a better suggestion. Participate in internships. There are a lot of sites out there that are filled with these types of opportunities in the field of Computer Science. A good site to check out it Internships.com, which posts opportunities on a regular basis. Another website you can browse online for opportunities is Indeed.com. I know I participated in Internships as a Computer Science student and it helped me a lot. I learned so much. Moreover, I saw first hand how the workplace was like, the dynamics, the culture, and the practicality mindset. If I could go back, I would totally do it again. If you would like more tips on what to do this summer as a Computer Science student, you can check out this article.

Work on side projects

This is another good one. While you are completing your degree, you can work on projects outside of campus. These can be apps you build yourself or your friends, even open-source projects. A good resource to find open-source projects where you contribute to is GitHub. There is a ton of interesting projects hosted online, where you can clone the repository and add value to. Which later on, you can put on your resume. Thus, gaining experience as a software developer.

Participate in hackathons

This one goes hand-to-hand with the previous tip. Hackathons are good opportunity to meet new people and work on developing applications that solve problems in our society. Furthermore, you get to apply the skills you have learned in the classroom in order to build an innovative solution to a particular problem. Many hackathons have themes, where you can work alongside teammates and design an application to that particular theme. It can be a web, mobile or even a smartwatch application. Another good thing about hackathon projects is that you can keep working on them after the hackathon is over. You can keep working with your teammates. As a result, you have a real-world application to add to your resume and an experience that will impact your career for the better. You can find online hackathons at ChallengeRocket.com. Moreover, you can find onsite hackathons at websites such as Major League Hacking, Devpost and many more. A good article that has a tone of resources on how to find hackathons, you can find it here by Jonathan Allen Grant.

So, there you go, 3 tips you can start doing today to gain experience as a software developer. If you start doing them now when you graduate you will raise your chances to find a job right away.

Hope it helps!

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Originally published at yadielcabrera.com on June 8, 2018.