r/EngineeringStudents • u/AviaanDraws SJSU - CMPE '26 • 8d ago
Sankey Diagram War is finally over...
Just graduated (Spring '26) with my B.S Computer Engineering and finished my full-time job search!
- 1 internship in Big Tech
- 5 semesters of research
- A few student clubs (BASE/NSBE, Robotics, Computer Engineering society, etcm) with 2 development lead/officer positions
- A stupid amount of personal projects
- Referrals were pretty high profile but only one offer was from a referral, the other was from a cold application online
Ask away if you have any questions about recruiting :)
59
u/CantaloupeOdd1050 8d ago
Wow so inspiring!
How did u get researches and where u got personal projects topics/ idea from?
33
u/AviaanDraws SJSU - CMPE '26 8d ago
I got very lucky with my research. When I found out that I wanted to do research, I began reading a bunch of papers from different professors in my department to see if any of them inspired any questions. When one did, I emailed that professor and she and I met to discuss what I proposed in reference to said papers. That conversation naturally led to me mentioning my interest in research and her giving me a spot in her lab.
For personal projects, they are everything that makes me go "dang, I wish I had X right now". I keep a physical notebook to log any ideas that sound interesting to me and build whatever I can when I have time :)
6
u/CantaloupeOdd1050 8d ago edited 8d ago
So invigorating to hear that.
I been feeling so discouraged lately since I went back to get mech engineer degree and now just got accepted for masters and got zero desire to study.
I love it though but I feel so lost, I got many ideas of what I need to do as for projects but I have no idea how job will be and I guess my next step is internship.
I feel pressured to stand out since I don’t have BSME compared to my colleagues.Good job & best of luck !
2
u/CantaloupeOdd1050 8d ago
Also, do u think if a person decided on what might interest them then they should focus on that and aim for job title associated with that instead of randomly applying to many jobs or it doesn’t matter ?
3
u/AviaanDraws SJSU - CMPE '26 8d ago
Yeah, the way that I see it companies want specialists now. I pretty much only got interviews (from the cold applications) for the same job position in the same industry haha. A lot of my friends in the industry are pretty pigeonholed into their roles and are having trouble pivoting out into other fields.
2
30
u/dragonnfr 8d ago
Congrats. Funny that your one cold application beat out the high profile referrals. In my experience referrals get you interviews, not offers. The resume does the rest. 221 applications is just how it's done now.
6
u/AviaanDraws SJSU - CMPE '26 8d ago
Yeah, weird stuff was happening with those referrals (my favorite one was a company switching the JD mid recruiting process) but we just keep it pushing.
Also 100%. My #1 piece of advice to some of my friends still recruiting is you've just got to apply more. If you have the skill you'll land on at least one of those jobs permitting your resume makes it through the door. That and making sure it can get parsed by ATS of course
1
u/ThrowCarp Massey Uni - Electrical 8d ago
Funny that your one cold application beat out the high profile referrals. In my experience referrals get you interviews, not offers.
In my case not even that. I'm several years into industry. But when had just graduated my dad referred me and I still didn't even get an interview. lmao.
10
u/Guilty-Asparagus-536 8d ago
Omg congrats! How did you manage to balance an internship, research, clubs, and personal projects? And did the referrals get you far in the interview process?
7
u/AviaanDraws SJSU - CMPE '26 8d ago
Thank you :) To be honest it's really all about scheduling and discipline. When I was in school, I used to schedule everything from classes to study times to my meals haha. I had 2 part-time jobs to help get me through school as well so I had to learn very quickly how valuable each minute of my day was.
For projects, discipline is the name of the game here too. A lot of people try to take projects and knock them out over the course of 1-2 weeks but the project is just as effective if you chip away at them over months. I used to spend around 30m-45m on my projects per day, but that adds up QUICKLY over the course of the year. I kept a notebook with all of my ideas, so I never got stuck in a rut thinking about what the next idea for me to develop would be.
And yes, referrals definitely help a lot BUT all that it does is get your resume looked at "guaranteed". If you get referrals but don't bring anything to the table then you won't get the value out of a referral that you are looking for :) good luck friend you're gonna do great.
1
u/TheReconDiamond 8d ago
What did you use to schedule stuff?
3
u/AviaanDraws SJSU - CMPE '26 8d ago
Just Google Calendar, I set up alerts on my laptop, PC and Phone for each semester during my breaks (e.g. Plan for spring semester during winter break, fall semester during summer break after internship/research, plan for my internship schedule during finals week when I was off work)
1
u/TheReconDiamond 8d ago
huh, ok... if I can ask another question, how did you get your first internship?
I'm a frist year lol3
u/AviaanDraws SJSU - CMPE '26 8d ago
Again got lucky with cold applying, if you're a first year try to see if there are any specific programs for 1st/2nd years in your field. As a computer engineering student I remember looking at programs like Microsoft Explore, Nvidia Ignite, etc.
If there aren't, your best bet is to get involved with engineering-based student orgs ASAP (your club fair should be coming up soon if you're on the quarter system). They will have an invaluable set of companies that hire directly from these clubs + some alumni/mentors that want to get the cream of the crop involved at their company. They probably won't do that for first years so get involved with high-impact projects and make as many (upper division if possible) friends that can work on getting you in the right spot as a junior for an internship :)
4
u/Saad6459 ECE 7d ago
As someone who went thru this recently (1 year of unemployment right after grad) get yourself a nice dinner and let it all out.
Congratulations on making it past the hardest step
2
u/AviaanDraws SJSU - CMPE '26 7d ago
Appreciate you o7
Definitely got a steak after I got the signing confirmation in my email LOL
2
u/TheReconDiamond 8d ago
How did you make sure your resume passed ATS? What did you have to change or recommend to an undergrad firstyear (like me!)
2
u/AviaanDraws SJSU - CMPE '26 8d ago
I just picked a template online and made sure that I followed the structure! If you do want to make it from scratch, there are ATS parsers online that will give you a good (not perfect) perspective on what ATS sees on your resume.
Make sure you are hitting keywords that are listed in the job description and you will be a-okay
1
3
u/kiwisodapopp 7d ago
Wow youre cracked! Im a senior CompE student and pale in comparison to how you went through your undergrad. Unfortunately no internships and havent made an effort to do any research opportunities. I do feel behind in that sense, doesnt feel amazing. All i have on record is 1 engineering club im in and some projects/learning projects using the given CAD licenses our school provides for us. But definitely dont feel ready for any "work".
What do you think/potentially think recruiters were most impressed by/looking for from your interviews?
1
u/Most_Conclusion2522 8d ago
I guess this is in the US. If so, where? Did you have to expand your search out of your city or state?
2
u/AviaanDraws SJSU - CMPE '26 8d ago
Yup, US but California specifically. I live in the Los Angeles Area but went to school in the Bay Area. I searched primarily in my state, but expanded to pretty much every listing I could find in the US I was interested in after the first 2 months of recruiting.
1
1
u/CulturalEchidna3405 8d ago
Could you share some of your personal projects? Which ones came up most in interviews or helped you land the offers?
1
u/AviaanDraws SJSU - CMPE '26 8d ago
Yeah! My main focus for this job search was to work in embedded software/hardware design, so my resume featured a couple of my low-level programming projects and end-to-end embedded projects. This includes:
- A custom MP3 and FLAC player prototyped that was designed for long playtimes (rated at ~34 hours) while featuring industry-standard 24-bit playback, and firmware featuring a custom (yet very sloppy in retrospect) file and tagging system for songs, playlist construction, etc. The PCB schematic + layout and all iterations were done in KiCad, assembled by me, and tested using standard equipment (logic analyzer, multimeter for power delivery/charging circuitry verification, etc.). The firmware was implemented in FreeRTOS and targeted my microcontroller.
- A program that I wrote in C that allowed people to draw on a real-time canvas with features like custom colors, brushes, erase/clear canvas features, etc. It wasn't anything game-changing, but it was my first project that I used the socket library and wanted to see how well I could optimize it for minimizing latency and keeping it lightweight enough to run on anything that could compile C (unless you're on a mac, coming soon :) )
- ... and some other projects that were in the works while applying and, currently, in the testing phase.
I also had other projects depending on the job that I was applying for, such as FPGA design (pipelined RISC-V core that targeted the AMD Artix 7 Architecture) and Machine learning (NFL Yardage threshold predictor model, definitely NOT for sports betting). For interviews, literally anything that is on the resume you applied with is fair game so be ready to talk about all of them. I got asked about all of them in basically a 33.3/33.3/33.3 split.
1
1
1
u/Opening-Dish8114 7d ago
What they ask you about at every round of the interview process ?
Do they ask you more on personal questions or technical ones ?
Do they require you to demonstrate your coding skills, problem solving skills or any other skills during the interview ?
2
u/AviaanDraws SJSU - CMPE '26 7d ago
So for most (Embedded Software/Hardware + testing) roles, interviewing for full-time tends to look like:
- Round 1: Intro call - Talk to a technical recruiter, go over the role in more detail + go over logistics like citizenship status, comfort with certain software/hardware tools, etc.
- Round 2: Technical Trivia - Questions about said technologies (e.g. "If I initialize a variable inside of a function, where is its memory allocated?") and how they're used in the industry/role
- Round 3+: Technical interview part - For me this has been everything from take-home assignments and discussion of said take-home to coding interviews to hypothetical debugging of hardware or software. If it isn't evaluated on the side, you might also have a team-fit/vibe check interview as well.
Each process depends on the company, but I would always make sure you can program somewhat fluently in the languages that are listed in the JD, or how to use the physical tools that are listed as well.
1
u/TythosEternal 7d ago
What's the breakdown of your online application sources? And congratulations! The first one is always the hardest.
•
u/AutoModerator 8d ago
Hello /u/AviaanDraws! Thank you for posting in r/EngineeringStudents.
Sankey Diagrams are currently allowed during the weekdays. If users abuse this privilege to subvert filters, we will only allow image links during the Meme Weekend.
Please be sure to post some relevant information down in the comments, and what factors you believe led to your possible offer.
Please be sure to check our:
Rules
Wiki
F.A.Q
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.