The Art of the Follow-up
As a student, the best way to get access to internships is to try as many strategies as you can to sign up for engineering events and find ways to meet new engineers and recruiters; whether this be at events, company tours, career fairs, hackathons, conferences, meetups, open-source or otherwise.
Whenever you have an in-person meeting or chat with an engineer or recruiter, you should develop a reliable habit to get their contact information and send them a follow-up afterwards. This guide is dedicated to providing specific suggestions on how to follow-up, build your network and expand your chances of finding a great internship.
Three Main Takeaways
The main things to remember are:
Whenever meeting an engineer or recruiter, always ask for their contact information
Immediately following the meeting, connect to them on LinkedIn
After your meeting, within 1-3 days, send them a personalized follow-up email
Build this habit, do this as often as you possibly can with as many engineers or recruiters as you meet.
Building out your Network
Meet More Engineers and Recruiters
Although many students don’t start thinking about developing a personal brand and networking in the technology industry until later in their career, it’s good to get started as early as you can. The more people you meet, the more people might be able to help you when you are looking for your next internship or job. Here are a few ways to get started:
Attend career fairs or career workshops on campus. Through CodePath, sign up to participate in virtual career fairs which will connect you directly to companies.
If you can, consider attending nearby hackathons. Hackathons are a great way to meet and talk to people from various companies. You can even try to meet one of the event organizers.
If you can, find a way to attend software conferences or events nearby. You can often find events on meetup.com or even on your campus.
Join online Discord or Slack communities built to create belonging for various groups in tech.
Take more CodePath classes, as many as you can 😄 and meet mentors and students through these programs and build connections. Even become a student leader, and teach other students to push forward your mastery.
Be mindful that no one achieves all of these things at once, and this is not a checklist to complete. You may find you dislike hackathons, or dislike certain clubs or meetups. This is entirely normal, explore around and find what works for you.
Build your digital presence and get engineering referrals
Anything that you can do to build connections to engineers working in industry is highly valuable.You can build connections to engineers in real-life through meetups, conferences, events, etc. But you can also build connections, often more efficiently, by developing your digital presence online including:
Start a blog (or post on medium) where you share concepts and journal concepts you are learning. Cover anything you find interesting as you learn. Later when you look back, you’ll be glad you did.
Create a Twitter account, configure your profile and start following engineers. Start retweeting and interacting with other engineers online.
Contribute in small ways to open-source online to build up your real-world skills and learn from engineers in the industry.
Remember that connections you develop with engineers will often directly lead to internships and opportunities over time. One secret you may not know is that an easy way to get noticed by a recruiter is to have an engineer at their company refer you directly or message them.
If you can get an engineer you met to help connect you to a recruiter at their company, the likelihood of getting an interview goes up exponentially.
“Manage Up” by following up!
As you are applying strategies to build your network by attending events, conferences, career fairs, meetups, etc, you need to develop a habit of “managing up”.
Managing up is a mindset defined as taking success into your own hands. This involves effectively communicating in such a way that makes it as easy as possible for everyone around you to succeed, including engineering recruiters, more senior engineers, or your manager/boss!
This practice of “Managing Up” is a critical set of skills that often differentiates the most successful professionals, and contributes significantly to your career success.
This even applies even before you get the job. Always make it as easy as possible for a recruiter or engineer to connect with you for another meeting or get you in for an interview. Do part of their job for them. This means after talking (even briefly) with any engineering recruiter or engineer, do the following:
Assume they want to connect again in the future and potentially mentor you or bring you in for an interview at their company. Assume this until you have overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
After chatting with them, say that it was great to meet them, express clear interest in learning more
Ask them: “Can I get your email address so I can follow-up with you later if I have questions?”
Connect with them on LinkedIn after with a custom message referencing the chat
Within a few days, follow-up with an email that includes a personalized write-up, and (where appropriate) attaches your resume and a link to your LinkedIn. Ask them if you can schedule a follow-up to learn more.
(Bonus) If this is a job you really want, you can send a follow-up a few days later through LinkedIn as well with a personalized note via LinkedIn messages.
If they don’t specifically mention a role to you, you should still try to get their contact information and follow-up with them. Assume once they learn more about you, they will want you to work at the company or help you in the future. Vast majority of students dont have the diligence to follow-up, so this is a great way to differentiate yourself.
Follow-up and build your connections. Every connection is a good connection even if it doesn’t work out, this is a small world, and every touch point is a good thing. You never know when that might come in handy or you might bump into this person in the future.
Last updated