I've been on the lookout for summer internship opportunities at bay area/SV startups for ~3 months now. I haven't heard back from... all but one of the ~20 companies I've emailed, and I'm curious as to if this is the behavior I should be expecting.<p>My cover letter is short, sweet, and proofread (mentions hackathon I won, personal projects, etc), and I've been attaching my resume (http://www.scribd.com/doc/126461525/) to it. The emails I send out are generally to generic jobs@company.tld email addresses, which I feel are eating up my submissions and never make it to real human beings.<p>So I ask you: is my experience representative of all job seeking, or am I doing something wrong? Should I be seeking out employees to reach out to? Is your company even remotely interested in filling pre-undergrad positions, and if so, does my pitch reach the barrier of entry for consideration?<p>(email == randall@randallma.com, if you'd like to talk privately to me)
Think about it from their perspective. Imagine you are an HR person, maybe if its a start up the CTO, and you receive the application you've been sending out. How would you react? Would the application be memorable? Would it impress you and make you think, this person seems like they are really enthusiastic about working at our company and they have impressive skills?<p>To this end, I'd say make sure you show them something you've built that's up and running and 100% completed. It only has to be just one thing, but make sure its impressive - something you're proud of and would consider your best piece of work. Send it as a link in your initial email.<p>Anything unique and cool that makes you stick out is good. Why not strap up your resume as an interactive app designed specifically for that startup you really want to intern for? Or whoever said you had to send a standard resume word doc? Why not mock up a sweetly designed resume - even if you're a programmer it shows motivation and ability to think outside the box. (See this link for inspiration: <a href="http://dzineblog.com/2011/09/35-brilliant-resume-designs.html" rel="nofollow">http://dzineblog.com/2011/09/35-brilliant-resume-designs.htm...</a>)<p>Also, Looking over your resume I see a lot of stuff but nothing that looks like its completed (maybe it is but the resume doesn't show it). I'd also scratch anything from your resume that doesn't impress. The link to <a href="http://countervailinteractive.com" rel="nofollow">http://countervailinteractive.com</a> goes to an expired domain, so I can't see what your skills are like, so I'd get that working or scratch it if you can't. Saying you built one website doesn't do much to get you in the door.<p>Anyways, I hope I didn't sound to harsh, I like seeing young people enthusiastic about programming and would like to see you get that internship. Good luck :)
In my humble opinion, firing off an email is a lost cause. HR folks are blasted all the time and it's really hard for them to "separate the wheat from the chaff" as they say.<p>Your idea of getting in touch with the employees is the right direction. You need to connect with someone personally from these companies. Connect with them on LinkedIn, hit them on Twitter, friend them on Facebook. Be wherever they are.<p>Also, consider posting your resume and cover-letter within a Hacker News posting asking for advice... oh wait...
Some of my thoughts:<p>It is very common for high schooler resumes to get no attention. After all, these companies want college interns. And to top it off, you're a high school <i>sophomore</i>. Most HS seniors never get internships either.<p>I'll second what jfaucett said. It is much more important to show 1-2 projects that you actually shipped, rather than 10 projects you never finished. This should make intuitive sense.<p>Things on your resume that are not very impressive: 1) Your GPA (high school GPAs are meaningless to a startup) 2) Software Dev Club VP (high school club leadership is meaningless to a startup)<p>Honestly, it's a turn off when the first 3 things I see on your resume are that you're a sophomore in HS, your GPA, and a club leadership position, since I know how meaningless those things are. You should put your experience/projects at the top, since those are the most impressive. I'm not saying that you shouldn't include those other things (GPA, club), but they should be at the bottom of your resume.<p>Some notes 1) Get your app on the Google Play store. 2) Add a link to your django-based news aggregator 3) Countervail is down. Get a version up on your own domain (randallma.com) and link to it just so you can show it off.<p>In fact, you should get your personal website up and running so that you can have a digital resume that actually <i>shows</i> people your projects (with links and screenshots). A drab resume is not going to get past HR.<p>Your Hackers&Founders description also has a grammar error.<p>Finally, the high school students I know who got internships at software companies ALL had some sort of inside connection - typically through their parents or a family friend. See if your parents have any contacts they can leverage.
Well, maybe one approach would be to search Hacker News for popular tech companies and see names of people at the company and then e-mail them? Ethical? I dunno. Attention grabbing? Probably.<p>Dropbox. E-Mail Drew Houston.
Twitter/Square. E-Mail Jack Dorsey.
Google. E-Mail Kevin Rose.<p>I dont't know how much this would help but maybe worth a try...<p>Kevin Rose also does a Foundation Podcast, a bunch of which are here in the bay area. Maybe review those for potential people to contact.
See also: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4079567" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4079567</a><p>---<p>EDIT: In short, open source contributions help a lot. (also: you'll have better luck finding not just jobs, but also valuable connections on HN, than anywhere else)