👋🏾 Introduction

---- Hi there! This handbook has been replaced by the ➡️ CodePath Career Kit ⬅️. You're welcome to continue to use the handbook if you prefer the format, but you can find all newer resources here. --- 👋🏾 Welcome to our CodePath.org Career Center Resources! ✨The goal of these guides is to demystify the software engineering field and how to set yourself up for success to become a software engineer or in other related positions after you graduate.

Who is this guide for?

This guide is specifically targeted for CodePath.org students that are currently attending or will be attending university, will be or are studying within a STEM major, and are interested in pursuing a career as a software engineer.

The guide assumes some knowledge of certain technical terms used throughout but is intended to be accessible to those very early within their university experience. Please contact us if you find anything confusing so we can continue to improve the accessibility of these guides!

Navigating this Guide

👈🏽 Jump to any section by clicking on the sidebar or 👇🏽 start by reviewing the content below!

• Interested to understand more about a career in software engineering? Check out our questions answered page for answers to common questions.

• Interested in the specific steps you should complete while in college? Check out our success checklist for a high-level overview.

• Interested in the skills and knowledge you’ll develop over your career as a software engineer? Check out the skills and knowledge map for a high-level introduction.

• Interested in starting or improving your resume? Check out our starter kit or resume improvement guide

• Interested in how technical internship interviews work? Check out our guide to technical interviewing for a high-level overview.

Overview

As part of our programs, we offer students direct guidance and feedback on their resumes, LinkedIns and provide coaching and guidance during your internship search. We want to make sure every one of you has a clear pathway to your first (or next) great technical internship.

There are four major areas we want to help students navigate:

1. Career Exploration - Provide you key context on how to succeed as a software engineer

2. Resume/LinkedIn - Creating an effective resume and LinkedIn profile

3. Applying for Internships - Sending out your resume and actually applying to companies

4. Technical Interviews - Studying and becoming confident in technical internship interviews

❗To sign up for these programs, check out our student career page here to get setup with a mentor, learn more about virtual career fairs, and see what other services we provide for our students!

1. Career Exploration

Many students at university have a lot of questions surrounding the overall technical landscape of being a software engineer, including what classes to take, what to do outside of class, what it’s like being a software engineer or even how to get started contributing in open-source.

Check out our guide Software Engineering - Your Questions Answered for a detailed overview of your most common questions.

2. Developing your Resume

Your internship search begins with a resume and LinkedIn profile:

• If you do not have a resume, check out these materials for creating one based on our template.

• If you already have a resume, check out our guide for improving your existing resume.

3. Applying for Internships

Your next step is applying for internships, this is about finding a set of companies and applying to them, and attending career fairs in order to set up a number of internship interviews:

If you are a Sophomore or Junior, check out our 3-steps to an internship search guide for a detailed walkthrough of how to start your summer internship search.

If you are a Freshman or Sophomore, apply for a few early pre-internship summer programs which do not require much technical coding knowledge.

4. Passing a Technical Internship Interview

After you apply to enough companies, you’ll need to make sure you are prepared for the technical interviews associated with the companies that respond back positively:

Check out our technical internship interview guide for everything you need to know about what technical interviews are like at top companies.

Bonus 1: Strengthening your Network

One of the best ways to increase your chances of finding great opportunities is to connect with more people: connect with new peers, recruiters and engineers. This can sometimes be difficult to do, or is put off because you don’t always know where to start.

Check out our guide on expanding your network and following up for a concrete look into how to expand your professional network as well as your digital presence.

Bonus 2: The Secret to Asking for a Mentor

We all know it’s smart to think proactively about finding mentors because the right people in your corner can really accelerate your growth.

However, we know that it can be awkward finding and asking a mentor to help, so we prepared a link to some great resources around finding and asking for a technical mentor.

Bonus 3: Code Quality and Cleanliness

When coding in an interview context or especially when presenting code on your Github profile, it’s important to spend some attention on making sure your code is clean and avoids sending “red flags” by having a lot of misspellings, badly named variables or inconsistent whitespace/indentation. Check out our code quality guide for more details.

This guide was originally authored and adapted by Nathan Esquenazi as part of the services offered to students through CodePath.org, a 501(3)c non-profit dedicated to forging an accelerated pathway into the tech industry for all university students.

Special thanks to the many students, recruiters, and professional engineers that provided feedback and made this guide possible!