How I Landed My First SWE Internship as a University Student

I’m a university student studying computer science, and when I got my first SWE internship, I had zero work experience. But I had 6+ tech projects under my belt. If you're trying to land an internship, here’s what worked for me.

Domain knowledge > Leetcode skills

Yeah, grinding Leetcode is nice, but it’s not the most important thing. What actually made a difference? Showing that I understood the tech and could talk about it.

After my technical interview, I chatted with the interviewer for 5 minutes about the technologies I would use, and I even gave them a recommendation of a technology he never heard about!

The closer your knowledge aligns with the job description, the more they trust you, even if you flop the interview. I (sort of) messed up a basic React question about data fetching, and I still got the job.

Don’t be too serious

Some people will tell you to act super professional, wear a suit, style your hair, and all that. You don’t need to do that for an internship (or even most full-time roles). Treat it like a casual conversation, smile, be chill, and be genuinely curious about what the company does and how you would fit in.

That energy helps way more than being stiff and robotic.

No experience? Get some.

If you don’t have projects, build some. Not for your resume, but for fun. Stick to one technology and get really good at it. For me, it was Next.js—I built side projects using it until I could answer any question about it without hesitation.

Here’s the CV that got me my 5-month internship

Here's the link:

https://www.danielfullstack.com/CV.pdf

The structure is inspired by this video because I liked the simplicity and how it efficiently uses space.

It's perfect for people with no work experience since you have space to include up to 3 side projects you've worked on. If you do have work experience feel free to add another heading above PROJECTS.

I hope this helps, if you have any questions about my CV let me know.

Fin

That’s pretty much it.

If you’re struggling to get an internship, stop overcomplicating it. Just build cool stuff, be curious, and don’t stress about being perfect in interviews. In fact, you should embrace imperfection and mistakes in the interview because that's the only way you will improve.