Recruiting Reflection (cut-out version)

    

Recruiting Reflection (cut-out version)

My freshmen year summer was one of a kind. I spent time in 4 continents: USA (5 weeks), Spain (3 weeks), Morocco (1 week), China (3 weeks), I even went to Florida in May. My sister also went studying abroad her freshmen year summer and suggested I do the same because I'm going to be working for the rest of my life, and it's hard enough to get an internship with as little experience I have. 

So as I wrapped up my freshmen year summer and I was heading into mid-September and October, the pressure started looming above me. I need to get an internship this summer because apart from the growth I get from it obviously, I know my worth, I know what I deserve, and it's so crucial for me because I'm planning on graduating in 3 years. 

This post is what I brand as the "cut-out version" because my sister told me theres some details I shouldn't post on the public blog. So I ended up deleting a lot of bullet points and deleted mainly jsut the parts where I go super in-depth and talk about my emotions too and about how I was sorta juggling different things. If you wanna read the full post without all those '[redact]' tags you can contact me, as the full version is just on my private blog!

My journey

SO here's my journey from September to February of all the applying I did to ultimately receive an offer for Amazon's SDE Intern in Seattle. Now I'll try my best not to make everything a humble brag like those linkedin posts, I'm just gonna be straightup and honest to reflect about everything. 

  • August: Started applying to citadel and jump trading cuz at ICPC NAC career fair they said their applications would open in August. I refined my resume, made a personal portfolio, made a spreadsheet to track all my applications, and I think thats all I remember. I made a tag called 'summer25' to group and keep track of the emails. A lot of this advice and help came from my sister.
  • September: Began mass applying on the simplify github job board. I would just cold apply to all of the positions that aligned with swe or quant or data engineer and stuff. I didn't do any resume changing for specific jobs or anything sweaty. I also didn't set up any alerts for the job postings, I would just apply to them at like 11 PM in my free time. It definitely helps to apply to brand new jobs I would say tho so I should've done that. I applied to like 80 positions in this month. 
  • October: [redacted]
  • November: [redacted]
  • December: [redacted]
  • January: [redacted]
  • February: [redacted]
Before I get into my Amazon specific section here's some brief stats that I generated from my spreadsheet.

And then I told deepseek ai to generate monthly bar chart:

Yeah you can see how in Jan and Feb I started realizing that spam applying was inffective and it was also getting late. In October and some days I got pretty aggressive with applying I would spend like an hour every night just filling out the applications. I got pretty good at them with simplify and I had some saved responses to reuse for if they ask me some quesitons like "why [this company?]" or "tell me about a project you worked on"

Amazon

So now let's get into the specifics of my Amazon timeline because wow is it unique and there are these ups and downs and lowkey drama. 

  • 10/17/24 = Applied to SDE Intern with referral from Nikhil
  • 11/29/24 = Received OA and speedran it, I just remember it was pretty easy
  • 12/23/24 = Invited for interview, asked for my availability
    • [redacted]
  • [redacted]
    • [(i cut out a lot of writing here lmao, contact me and ask if u want any details)]
  • I'm also reflecting just about my coding journey. Binarysearch was the roots and it sparked it all. Without binarysearch what would I even offer, I wouldn't stand out. I met so many people that I still talk to so many day, and many of them I ended up meeting up with in real life, and then one of them refers me to Amazon and just guarded and pushed and kept believing me through all my mistakes and all my f*** ups and I nearly fumbled this so many times and it somehow happens that I get the offer, it feels like this was all planned out and meant to be. Binarysearch really changed my life, Nikhil really changed my life. Binarysearch made coding so fun, just the chat rooms element and their UI it made coding so fun and so competitive and thats all you need and I started learning concepts and I spent so many hours on that site and proved so much and it's given me so much, its literally taken me to Florida and now to Amazon to be a Software Developer Engineer Intern like that is crazy. It's honestly humbling just like man just like how all of this works. This really does mean so much to me in so many ways. I elaborate on like all these aspects and like man it means so much to me. 
  • 2/23 = Me writing this post, honestly still in disbelief man. It feels a lot like last year February too, where it didn't feel real and I knew it wouldn't feel real until I stepped foot on the airport and realized that I'm really about to fly to Orlando. That's probably how it's gonna be with this now, it's not gonna feel completely real until I fly to Seattle and realize that wow it's actually happening. 

So some advice

If I were to redo and restart, there's definitely some things I would change. Here's some like tips.
  • Use the simplify github job board, but to maximize your odds it definitely helps to set up alerts or some system so that you apply to the jobs right when they get posted, it does make a difference apparently.
  • However, don't depend on that job board, I only got like a few OAs and like one interview that ended up getting cancelled anyway. Just use that job board for the quantity aspect cuz it doesn't take that much time. The big thing I learned is that referrals are super useful, especially for me where I'm an Applied Math major at UC Santa Cruz, not very strong. 
    • So if I were to redo, I would definitely seek out more referrals. I've seen some instagram reels talking about cold dm-ing and cold emailing company recruiters and although I didn't do that I feel like it's pretty viable.
  • A lot of people also talk about spamming leetcode which is honestly not relevant to me like yeah it's just not a worry for me which is a BIG HUMBLE BRAG LMAO but yeah i cnat speak on any training routines for that. Behavioral though it does help to watch some youtube videos and look at their company values and stuff and the big thing is creating and telling stories. I'm just going very surface level about this stuff.
  • Never take interviews on school wifi, I learned it the hard way. Also just be on top of things, dont be careless and for example write the wrong month for your availability even though it seems obvious but man like double check this stuff when youre writing tehse crucial emails, triple check it. 
  • Lowkey I saw this reddit post and despite the clickbait title some of the tips said I agree with. 


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