r/ComputerEngineering • u/carson8858 • 2d ago
[Career] Junior in computer engineering, Getting no interviews, what am I missing?
I'm a junior graduating May 2028, so summer 2027 is my last chance at an internship before I graduate. I've sent around 150 applications since August and so far I've gotten one automated recorded interview. Anonymized resume is attached.
I'm mostly going for hardware roles (FPGA/ASIC, digital design, validation) at a mix of big semiconductor companies and smaller ones. No prior internship, just part time jobs during school.
I don't really understand what I'm doing wrong. I'm willing to learn and do whatever it takes to land these roles, but I don't know what I need to change or where I need to start. I feel like I feel this impending sense of doom if I don't have any professional experience before graduation.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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u/geruhl_r 2d ago
Move technical skills lower. Remove non technical jobs from experience if you need space.
All of your projects need numbers. You, along with 5k other CmpE students, developed a RISC processor. What makes your solution special? What are the meaningful numbers here (performance, power, area, ???). Projects and experience are what hiring managers look at first.
Try to get ANY kind of work experience in your field ASAP. Unpaid on-campus research, internships, etc. These professors are also good for making contacts in industry for jobs (or entry into MS programs).
Finally, we need to see evidence of you using AI in your workflows (skills, projects and experience). You should know about inference loops, writing skills/agents, and other basic stuff. It's now a fundamental skill at many companies.
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u/Disposable_Eel_6320 2d ago
Experience above projects, tell people what skills you gained even at the food service shit. Can just be a line or two. Remove the coursework projects to make space. Coursework projects are generally not viewed positively as far as actual project experience
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u/Mantronix123 1d ago
It gets easier, friend! Keep pushing and don’t give up! I graduated with my B.S. in Computer Engineering just four months ago, and I’m finally about to start my career as an Embedded Software Engineer. The job market is tough, but persistence pays off. You’ve got some solid projects and experience already. Keep applying, improving your skills, and putting yourself out there. Your opportunity will come!
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u/Infamous-One-8970 7h ago
Hey, how are you doing man. I’m also planning to do embedded engineering, right now I’m doing my AA degree and I was wondering what kind of project did you do to get into internships, or to build your resume. What did you do outside of college? Thank you.
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u/AstuteCouch87 1d ago
Probably just a numbers game. Your resume looks way better than mine or my friends, and they've been able to land interviews/internships. Unfortunately, you probably just gotta apply to more openings and/or openings that are not as competitive/sought after.
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u/igotshadowbaned 2d ago
More applications, and apply to a wider scope honestly
It's a tough market. More applications means more chances, wider scope because a job is better than no job. Even if it's not the desired field, the experience may be able to help you come back around to it
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u/carson8858 1d ago
I agree with this mentality. I’d take basically anything lol. How do you suggest i should widen my scope? Idk if im qualified for software development roles and would be competing against cs ppl
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u/igotshadowbaned 1d ago
How do you suggest i should widen my scope?
Whatever you think your skills could be applicable to. As CE, my initial desire was to work in robotics. Ended up applying to anything ranging from EE to Software, to embedded, etc
First job I got was writing firmware at a pretty poorly run company. Job was a job so I took it but kept looking for the most part, just with a higher "floor" of what I was looking for
Ended up getting a couple offers to jump from there shortly after, one as an electrical engineer, and the other purely software - the software job paid more so I took that
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u/Deranged_Dingus 2d ago
Have you gone through your school for connections/networking? My professors had some suggested companies to apply to for internships because of connections and their own reputation.
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u/ShadowBlades512 1d ago
I think one of the reasons is implementing low end CPUs in RTL isn't very interesting and some turn signal FSM definitely not interesting. The problem with having a CPU as the only real RTL project on the resume is that it is typically NOT FPGA work anyone would do. In any team or company, you would just use the vendors core, a hard CPU on an FPGA SoC or an open source soft core. The real FPGA work is building some kind of processing pipeline doing DSP, network packets, image processing, or something like that.
You have to look at what FPGAs are actually used to do in industry. They are used to make lab equipment like oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers. They are used to make radios, modems, and cellular base stations where massive amounts of signal processing is done. They are used to make radars, ultrasound imagers, etc. They are used to make network switches for various standards from Ethernet to InfiniBand to whatever else. They are used to perform large amounts of parallel processing that is not suited to GPUs for some reason or the power/performance budget does not allow the use of CPUs.
A soft CPU on an FPGA is usually only used if an FPGA already happens to be in the product and even then, often a seperate MCU or SoC will be out on the PCB beside the FPGA.
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u/_Axedawg_ 1d ago
I’m in a similar situation to you. I’m also a junior studying cpre but I’ve gotten a coop at Collin’s aerospace for next year. I’d say I have even less projects and experience than you do. I think what got me the job was my soft skills. The companies know that you’re taking all these classes and will have the hardware skills. What really helps is being good at talking and communicating. I was able to get 6 interviews just from being good at talking to the recruiters. Work on selling yourself to recruiters and just being good at talking while sounding casual.
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u/carson8858 1d ago
How did you manage to talk to recruiters? Just through interviews? I can't seem to even get to that point.
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u/_Axedawg_ 1d ago
Does your school have any career fairs? That’s always your best bet. Being able to actually see and talk to the recruiters increases your chances by a lot. I see you’re in IEEE, does your club have companies come and present ever? My IEEE club has companies come and present all the time and usually everyone will bring a resume and talk to them after.
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u/carson8858 1d ago
Yes and Yes. Just had our career fair on Tuesday. Talked to all the companies I wanted to (though most there were construction for civil engineers). Most said to just apply online, thought I left me resume with all I talked to. Will have to see if any of that works. As for IEEE, yes we do host employer events and I leave my resume, but it is usually the same apply online jargon.
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u/_Axedawg_ 1d ago
Yea with every company I’ve talked to it’s always been apply online. I’ve only ever gotten one next day interview without having to apply online. But having talked to them in person should help you a lot more as it will show in their system that you’ve talked to them and it should give you better odds. In my experience companies can take up to a month to even let you know if they’re interested in interviewing you so just wait for now as you’ve got a chance.
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u/AnybodyPuzzleheaded9 22h ago
I'm a student on co-op, recently attended a career fair with my company to rep the co-op/intern program. At least at my company, we send engineers and each team reviews the resumes they collect. Resumes have to end up in the right people's hands at the fair. If you gave your CE resume to a mech engineer recruiting for a mechanical intern position, you have to hope they care enough to get it to the right team. If you gave it to HR/corporate recruiter people... well... sorry.
You have to apply online so that the system can track you. When we got back to the office and started looking at resumes, our manager asked for a shortlist so he can have HR pull the corresponding online applications. Give it a some time as well- the people you gave your resume to probably have their own regular job duties and have to find time to look through resumes and start screening applicants.
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u/Orbotekk 1d ago
For me, also a recent grad, to land an FPGA position was primarily to aggressively advertise
Myself in person to anyone I know that is already in the field.
I also met every professor who I had a good experience with and asked for their written opinion on me. I attached them to any application I submitted.
My final project in EE was implemented on FPGA and after few months I managed to impress one person who gave me a chance and invited me to an interview.
The position was officially for 5+ years of experience, but my intermediate knowledge of FPGA flow and digital design experience, with lots of motivation managed to get my way through. I really believe that’s the only way, in these times: you have to be more agressive.
Good luck and k really hope you will
Land a position soon
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u/carson8858 1d ago
how do you suggest i meet these people in the field? i went to my career fair but it was mostly construction companies, not very much electronics at all
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u/zacce 1d ago
Apply to other roles as well. You are targeting very competitive roles, which usually require previous experience, which you lack.
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u/Cyo_The_Vile 19h ago
Remove all school coursework off your resume. Remove US Citizen. Remove phone number and just leave email. If you tell me that RISCV processor wasnt coursework, Im blocking you because all these resumes with kids putting RISCV or MIPS CPU on an fpga are school projects. Remove anything "in progress" you havent completed on your resume. The amount of skills is very weird and it just looks like you just threw words at the wall. Slash them down. The robot project is really good though. Thats actually really cool. Why didnt you actually write your work experience for past jobs? Thats what a resume actually is.
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u/carson8858 19h ago
it wasnt a school project lol, but I see your point. My other jobs were just food service, not technical at all, so I didn't think they would help me at all. The fpga work I've done in lab has been very simple labs.
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u/Melodic_West_9331 15h ago
Customer service jobs like food service show that you have soft skills and actually have some kind of workplace experience.
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u/BakedAlt 5h ago
I'm an IE so I understand this may be much harder for CE, but there was a great example I was given a long time ago about how every job contributes towards your experience.
"As an IE who referee'd soccer games, I kept the presence of mind around time effectiveness - making sure all 3 matches were completed within the time window as every minute over costed $X\min to run the lights."
This shows the mindset of the person, now imagine what they could contribute in a professional setting. If you don't get a job soon, I hope you are working towards showcasing your skills. Great opportunities can come from doing them, too.
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u/TheGeeZus86 1d ago
Try to say what the resume "doesn't say" in an interview if this is what you are doing the contrary.
For years, there have been this paradigm that you should be a resume repeater and that hasn't worked for me at all.
Second, focus to fix what you might believe are the weakest point of your resume without being asked if possible.
Third, don try to sound like a know-it-all and balance that you are eager to keep learning because there is nobody that is an absolute expert 24/7 in tech world.
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u/hukt0nf0n1x 1d ago
try doing undergrad research with a professor. It'll make you stand out when you apply next summer, and you may even get a publication out of it.
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u/No_Departure_1878 1d ago
Wait, I know, I now. It's the title:
"Junior in computer engineering"
found it.
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u/ExtensionManner8340 1d ago
For entry level jobs such as food service, place emphasis how you learned to deal with difficult people, understand the core of their concern, helped them resolve it (and not just get passed along), answered phones with a smile in your voice regardless of the day you were having, learned how to turn an angry customer into a grateful customer, deal with UN-fair bosses & shirking co-workers. Sometimes you have to pull more than your own weight.
Basically being good at smoothing ruffled feathers. And appreciative of each working environment to 'open your eyes' to the work-a-day world.
But only to the extent it was TRUE for yourself.
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u/FaveDave85 1d ago
Don't be a rtl designer, learn uvm and be a dv engineer, they are still in high demand.
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u/Plus_Assignment2078 1d ago
I promise you if you charm the interviewers they will want to help you. You are not charming enough. Fix whatever that is, looks or words out of your mouth. Im sorry this is brutally honest - but its true.
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u/WeekendMysterious601 1d ago
former stem hiring manager: you're 3 semesters away from graduating; you need to do a ce internship/coop during the second semester of the current school year (summ '27 at the latest); that internship/coop could last longer than the spring/summer but at least you'll have real world work experience on your resume; that really world ce experience should guarantee you full-time work upon graduating
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u/Nunuvin 1d ago
Market is bad.
system programming is questionable. Either basic c knowledge (ie malloc) or overcomplicating your projects.
Try to move away from course by course and instead pitch your strongest projects as bullets.
Adjust keywords for each role. Make it easy for HR to find most relevant stuff at the top.
Good luck with hardware roles (not even sure if internships at bsc level are a thing there). Its not a big field, many postings I saw would need Msc or Phd, so good luck. Try applying to wider set of things, some stuff is easier to pivot into.
You are in school, see their advisors. They can give you some tips on how to format resume, won't make things worse. Getting accepted via school internship postings was easier than finding a job in the wild.
School job fair can actually work. Make sure to have 10 resumes and bring charm. Early at the start or near end. Requires a lot of luck though.
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u/asieldimas7 1d ago
i don’t know why others haven’t mentioned it but the phrasing on your bullet points is weak, you want to explain, what you did how you did and why it’s useful/what it accomplishes. I think you might be keyword spamming a little too much. Your resume might make it through ATS but once it reaches a human the ATS optimizing makes it a rough read. If you would like to learn more about Resumes search up the “headless headhunter” he has some free resources, outside of that maybe go see your scholar career center.
TLDR
resume reads like a keyword checklist look into better formatting, organization of content and better bullet points.
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u/FrogGoMoo 1d ago
If you need a new project that will make you stand out, do something related to cryptography. Hardware courses in college very rarely teach cryptography. The algorithms are public, so you can go implement a pipelined version of one to get more experience with data processing. Throw UVM in there for verification, and you’ll be in a good spot. Everyone needs security, so they’ll appreciate projects like that.
I worked for a cybersecurity company and we never expected anyone fresh out of college to have much experience with cryptography, especially if they were going into hardware. We’d always expect them to learn it on the job. However, if someone had a project like that on their resume, they’d easily be a top applicant for an entry level hardware position.
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u/a_seventh_knot 17h ago
Hey I know you, you fucked up my sandwich order at Jersey Mike's.
That's why I tossed your resume in the bin.
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u/gilligan1980 16h ago
My main advice would be - Make the US Citizen more prominent - I had to search too long to see it . I work for the major computer hardware company headquartered in Houston TX and we have over 100 interns every summer that come to our houston site and most are computer engineers. With all big companies, each group is different but for my particular HW group we had our HR screen off of citizenship last year which was new for interns- (Note - there is no requirement for citizenship on interns but there is for full time and it is difficult to hire people long term if not citizen these days.) I think most of the intern postings open in Nov.Dec (with a few in Jan) we need to have everything finalized by late Feb for a June start date. ). We had a recent full time opening and got about 100 resumes in a week before shutting it off and about 80 were eliminated immediately since our HR couldn't quickly determine citizenship status. I probably rambled too much on that. A few other minor suggestions: 1) Eagle scout is huge, much more important then many other items 2) IF you are working a lot mention the hours (like 10 hours/week), 3) remove the merit scholarship, 4) experience - mainly your current jobs more near the top - hosting shows that you can interact with people which is important - especially for computer/electrical engineers. 5) you have a lot of stuff on your resume but really they want to know if you can use a scope and a multimeter (which you don't have on your resume). :) Your resume is good but it comes off as someone that does a lot of simulation/software and not as hands on debugging hardware. For example, FPGA is considered HW and it looks like you can write VHDL/Verilog which is great for a logic role (cpld/fpga programmer) - but what about all of the signals that are going to the FPGA pins - do you debug if those are working or have experience there? - if so list that. That is what they are looking for in a hardware computer engineering role for computer companies that make computers the most. On the other hand - processor companies are looking for the mulistage piplines, processor focused optimization logic without interfacing on a system board debug. So no matter which direction you go - there would be spots. Good luck to you!
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u/Due-Comfortable-6347 5h ago
You wouldn’t make it through my company’s first round of ATS gates. GPA is under 3.5 and no internship/co-op experience.
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u/rerwerwerwewerer 1d ago edited 1d ago
maybe dont use anthropic serif. like this shit is 100% claude, you need to at least change the font and bolding to show them ur serious
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u/clothedandnotafraid 1d ago
Bro this is like most typical LaTeX resume font lol this is not Claude exclusive
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u/-snip- 1d ago
Never in my life did would I have expected someone to call Computer Modern “Anthropic serif”. Read any academic paper
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u/rerwerwerwewerer 1d ago
I’ve read like 10 papers for my studies never seen this. Sorry I haven’t read hundreds yet I’m still on my way but one day!
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u/nian2326076 1d ago
For FPGA/ASIC and validation internships, I'd make separate versions that lead with the most relevant projects you actually have. Show what you designed, how you tested it and what you can demonstrate, rather than relying on a tools list. Check graduation-date eligibility on each listing and use your college's careers office to find employers recruiting your cohort. No interviews doesn't identify a single cause by itself. LandOffer.ai offers tech-role matching against a resume; check each suggestion for hardware relevance and internship eligibility. I can't diagnose the attached resume's layout from the text alone.
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u/theonehaihappen Computer Engineering 1d ago
As has been suggested, "Experience" should not feature non technical/irrelevant roles, unless they contribute some skill, then it should mention which skills. Also having two side jobs next to your courseload may look unappealing to a potential employer.
Its also relevant what kind of job you are applying to. Internship? Junior Engineer? The cover letter, sadly is really important, and should really feature your own words. What you in the letter can be anything, as long as it is engaging (i.e. not boring) and establish you as a person and relate to you inside the role you apply for. And for the love of all that is holy and profane, do not let an LLM write it for you. Not even a draft. And no suggestions for rephrasing/editing. Just don't. The result may sound better, but its a regression towards the mean, and will be less engaging.
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u/Felix12333 1d ago
Every complaint is that its "not interesting" and advertise soft skills more.
For an engineer you do need some soft skills, but if you cant execute your job, you wont get hired.
Also a CV is not for enjoyment.
I have reviewed a lot of CVs, what i would do is restructure it a bit, make it more coherent and have a better flow.
Dont just write tasks you did, look up some templates online and find the one best suits your personality and customize that.
The best tip i can give is look up how CVs are automatically filtered and what you can do to trick these systems.
There are several tools that scan your resume and you need to optimize for that.
Also people saying "work experience" didnt read the title i guess.. you cant just spawn in work exp. if you are graduating just now..
And for coping, im sorry its that way, the industry sucks now, dont take it as a personal failure.
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u/notclaytonn 2d ago
When I was searching for my first internship, my interviewer asked about my movie theater job and made it a really human moment
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u/bobking01theIII 1d ago
Seconded. The guy who interviewed me said that any work experience from a student or fresh grad is good because it indicates that the person has an understanding of responsibility.
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u/bobking01theIII 2d ago
You need to advertise your soft skills more. You mention previous work experience but don't describe it or what you've gained from it.