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Internships and Jobs

The market for computing professionals is strong, see the department’s Market for Computing Careers. At Calvin, most CS majors do at least one internship before graduation, and, based on reports from the CS graduating class of 2023, 100% were either employed or accepted to graduate school within six months of graduation. 

But these things don't just happen, you need to plan ahead to maximize your chances of finding the sort of internship and job opportunities that best suit you.

On-Campus Internships

As a student, you can consider working for the CS Department as a lab assistant, grader, or research assistant, or for Calvin Information Technology (CIT) as a student intern. These appointments tend to look good on a résumé or a grad school application, and they're particularly useful for international students because they're on campus, and, thus, don't require CPT approval. You can email applications for department positions to the CS Department administrator just before the beginning of each semester, or contact CIT for student positions.

Off-Campus Internships and Jobs

For positions off campus, we suggest that you attend the vocational events offered as part of the department seminar series, that you engage with Calvin's Career Center, and that you follow these two sources for job opportunities.

  • Abstraction’s job list: Abstraction maintains an archive of all internship and job advertisements the department receives. Subscribe to abstraction-jobs to receive these emails directly.
  • Handshake: Calvin’s Career Center maintains Handshake, a searchable list of job and internship opportunities. Register for this service and follow it regularly.

We, in the CS Department and Calvin University, post all internship and job opportunities we know of in one of these two places.

Finding a Job or Graduate School Appointment

Following graduation, most students go into the job market, but graduate school can be a good option. Here's a discussion of graduate study options in computer science. For students headed for the job market, be prepared to face challenges in getting interviews and job offers. Because these challenges beset graduates at all levels of experience and accomplishment, it's best to take heart. Job prospects are generally good for computer science graduates provided that they prepare for their job search and that they don't give up! This section provides some resources for doing this, following the early steps of this guide from LinkedIn.

  1. Develop your skills
    • Completing your undergraduate degree in CS is an important step here. Most CS-related jobs require a bachelor degree.
    • Beyond your course work, it's wise to seek out other opportunities to apply what you're learning.
      • Leadership activities - Contributing to student organizations, both in CS and beyond, can demonstrate your ability to contribute 
      • Software projects - Participating in project and training experiences such as these can be valuable in finding a job. 
        • Build Fellowships - Some of our students, particularly international students, have participated in these projects.
        • CodePath Courses - These are free courses that include interview prep and technical courses.
        • Certifications - Calvin's CS degrees tend to focus on conceptual material applied in an academic setting. This provides a solid foundation for futures in either business or graduate school, but it can help to pursue applied technical certifications such as the ones suggested here by ComputerScience.org:
    • You start pursuing these these opportunities now, continue them in parallel with your job hunting, and expect to continue them throughout your career.
  2. Create your portfolio
    • Résumé - A résumé is a traditional portfolio element, but it's not the only artifact you should create.
    • LinkedIn Profile - Create and maintain a professional LinkedIn profile for yourself. 
    • GitHub - Create an maintain a GitHub profile that collects your project work.  
  3. Build your network
    • Developing relationships with your advisor, your professors and your undergraduate classmates will be a key part of your network, but it's not the only network you should build.
    • Take every opportunity to connect with professionals outside of Calvin, including:
      • Connecting with seminar speakers
      • Attending local developer groups
      • Going to job fairs, not just at Calvin but also at local universities (e.g., GVSU, MSU)
      • Participating with vocational activities sponsored by Calvin's Career Center.
  4. Prepare for your interviews - Job interviews tend to be some combination of two types:
    • Behavioral - Here are some useful resources for behavioral interviews.
    • Technical - Here are some resources for preparing for technical interviews.
      • LeetCode - This is a pretty well-known resource that provides some free and some for-pay interview-prep materials.
      • NeetCode - This is a curated list of LeetCode problems.
      • Coderbyte - Yet more tech interview questions
      • HackerRank - Many tech companies use this to administer their tech challenges, so it's worth doing some of their practice exercises.
    • In addition, this technical Interview Guide from Nick Scialli is pretty comprehensive. 

Finding jobs as an international student graduate can be particularly challenging. The suggestions made above still apply here, but it's best practice to work closely with Calvin's BIPOC & International student support services, and to monitor these resources for internationals.

  • Interstride - A job network for international students at Calvin
  • Sojon - A resource for internationals by an international Calvin graduate
  • Internships - Calvin's Career Center's guide for international internships.

Finally, here are some additional vocational resources for computing-related jobs:

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