Preparing for an internship interview

[dgsm98]

Hello everyone,

I have a question on how I should prepare myself for a interview that will be coming up in the next school year. I am going into my junior year at high school which is a technical high school, and I take the computer science shop. During my senior year we are allowed to go on co-op. For my shop, there are two employers, one which only offers the help desk technician job (not interested) , and the other that offers a variety of jobs (interested). I am looking for the programmer job. In my shop (12 kids), I am the only one who likes and knows how to code. So, I have an advantage for my school, yet this company hires from many others schools too. I am just wondering if I should like create a portfolio or maybe some other thing to help me get the programmer job. Any suggestions? Thanks.

[Lowest0ne]

Just to be clear, this employer is part of your school?

Are you able to talk to the employer? The best thing you can do is start a conversation about how you are interested in the position and wonder what you could do to help you prepare for it.

If not, talk to a guidance counselor. I really think the best thing you can do is let everyone who might care that you're interested in such positions. They will help you get what you want.

As far as a portfolio, set yourself up with a git hub account. Real life jobs are won by having an active account that not only shows you are interested in coding, but often also that you contribute to open source software. At the least, do a git tutorial and push that to github. I like this one:

http://gitimmersion.com/

[dgsm98]

Thank you for the information Lowest0ne. The employer is not part of my school, and no I am not able to talk to the employer. But I will try to talk to my teachers because they have known the employers for a while now, and they'll let me know about the programming job. And I will look into github. Thanks.

[Lowest0ne]

Hmm, looks like the tutorial I linked you to uses ruby.

If you have ruby, you're fine, but this should suffice:

// hello.cpp
#include <iostream>

int main( int argc, char* argv[] )
{
  std::cout << "Hello World\n";
  return 0;
}

There is some ruby syntax that might be strange, for example:
name = ARGV.first || "World";

It's c++ equivalent is:
std::string name = argc > 1 ? argv[1] : "World";

[IWishIKnew]

I recently recieved an internship with an airline company. Here's the thing: you don't want to work for someone who you won't be happy working for. Programming under feelings of resentment or anger may tend to lead to.... bad things. I don't speak from personal experience, but I know how easy it is to type a few malicious lines out of spite for someone. ;)

Luckily, I have an awsome boss, and my job is really flexible. I love what I do!

I have only two suggestions for you:

1. Know your stuff: it's a given. No one will hire you if you don't have the qualifications for the job, even if it's just an internship.

2. Be yourself. Be professional, but talk to your interviewers as if you were talking with somone on the street. Be honest, but don't be overly blunt. If they don't hire you because they don't like your personality, you probably don't want to work for them.

3. Show off your work: Have some sort of portfolio for your employers to check out. You want to make it a place they can easily access, and you only want to put your best work there: only work you would boast about to everyone else without feeling like it needs any touch-ups (not that you should boast...). Github is where I keep my work. I was able to tell my interviewers about projects, and if they seemed interested in them, I would tell them I had them up on github, that they could look at them. They typed in the url on their computers and could see my work as they interviewed me.

Hope this helps!