In the previous post, we showed you the importance of cold emailing and how some of the most famous people in the world created opportunities for themselves, including the creators of BeeHyve.

In this post, we want to talk about how to do this yourself. We cover effective and practical ways to reach out to people and create job opportunities for yourself, without sounding like a jerk.

These tips can help you land jobs that you didn’t think you could have. In fact, we asked 20 people how they landed their first job — a majority (15) people said it was by getting involved early and asking.

So, how do you get started?

Step 1. Make your target list

Make a list of companies and industries you are interested. Learn as much about the companies as you can. Are you interested in BlockChain? Make a list of all blockchain related companies — what the companies do, strengths, weaknesses, leaders, etc. This not only becomes your target list, but also makes you semi-intelligent about the space so when you do have a conversation with someone, you can reference useful insights.

Step 2. Get contact info

From the above list, the next step is to figure out how to contact people at these companies. You can usually do a quick LinkedIn search, checkout the About Me pages for companies, or even just guess their email address.

Here are chrome extensions that help you guess e-mail addresses:

Hunter
Rapportive

Step 3. Reach out

Reach out. Write a nice, humble note to these people. The key is to be genuinely interested in the company, industry, and what they do. Have some thoughtful points ready, be respectful, and don’t force anything. The best way to craft your reach out is to find something interesting that that person has done and refer to that in the email. Perhaps you went to same school or perhaps they wrote some cool blog post or perhaps they worked on some cool project at company X. It doesn’t matter specifically what you pick, but find something to bring up in the e-mail. This is a great starting point to connect with someone you are reaching out to.

Below is a quick template to get you started.

Hi [manager name],

I hope you don’t mind this reach out. I am currently a student at [school name], and I am super interested in learning about [company name]. Would you mind if I asked you a couple of questions? No worries at all if you are too busy. Happy to chat on the phone if it’s easier.

Here is a little information about me [linkedin link].

I noticed you recently shipped [feature name]. Is there a way I can play around with it?

What’s it like to work at [company name]

Looking forward to hopefully hearing from you! I am super excited about [company name]

Thanks,
[your name]

Step 4. Wait & Iterate

After you reached out to a few companies / managers, here is what to watch for.
You’ll get rejected. A lot. Many people will not respond. That’s not a big deal. You have nothing to lose. Don’t lose faith or motivation. It likely has nothing to do with you, your note, or message.

Be on the lookout for feedback. I bet some people will respond. Even if nothing works out, ask them how you can improve? What were they looking for? Is something not clear on your resume?

Follow up right away — if someone does take the time to respond and engage, follow up right away. The 12hr rule stands (you should respond to emails / messages within 12 hrs).

Go forth and create the jobs of your dreams. Remember, you have nothing to lose.

As always, check out the resources on BeeHyve Career resources — Free Resume reviews, advice, and job posts.

Be sure to tell us how it went.

(Originally posted on BeeHyve blog)

How to write a cold email to land your next internship was originally published in HackerNoon.com on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How did Steve Jobs get his first job? How did Stacy, a high school junior, get an interview at Twitter, beating out 99% of all applicants that apply for a job?

Did they attend a career fair? Did they have the best resume in the world? Go to the best schools? Know the “right” people? No.

They picked up the phone (in Steve Job’s case — quite literally) and asked. That’s it. This post goes over the importance of asking and that can actually be an effective strategy to land a job/internship, especially when it’s difficult to stand out.

The reality is that the best jobs in the world are not posted or available at a career fair. Hiring managers care a lot less about your GPA, what school you went to, or what grade you got in compilers, than most people think. Often GPA, school, etc. are just used to filter between a large number applicants, and have very little to do with requirements of the actual job. You often just need a way to stand out.

What impresses a lot of employers, even the ones that do post jobs, is Hustle and creativity. That doesn’t require a high GPA or a name brand school.

For example, this is the email a high school junior sent to Dick Costolo (then CEO of twitter) asking for a job. The high school junior googled to find the CEO’s email address. The email got her noticed, and an interview. That’s further than 99% of applicants get by applying for job through company website.

Hi Mr. Costolo,

My name is Stacy. I understand your time is valuable. I’ll only write three bullet points:

Programming since 7th grade.

Have most experience working in Java/Android. Check my website if have time.

I want to intern for Twitter this summer as a high school senior. How?

Thanks,
Stacy

hink about it, if someone emailed you with a nice thoughtful email asking to learn about your company and potentially work there, would you turn them down? I bet most people would actually give that person a shot, much more so than even applying online to company website. I know I would.

Furthermore, what do you have to lose? If the company doesn’t respond, so what? You have nothing to lose — you are not working at the company now anyways :)

In the next post, we’ll show you exactly how to reach out, some email templates on what to write, and some other effective strategies.

Check out www.beehyve.io for more helpful tips, resume reviews, and 1:1 help — all for free!

Btw, here is what Dick Costolo, the CEO of Twitter responded with:

Stacy,

I like it when people get right to the point!

We do indeed have openings this summer for mobile developers in java/android. [twitter recruiter] is copied here and she runs our intern program.

[twitter recruiter], can you follow-up with Stacy and get his resume etc. for our process this summer?

Thanks Stacy!

Also here is how Steve Jobs got his first job — by cold calling (literally) the founders HP.

• *Names changed for anonymity
• *Original post here

How did Steve Jobs get his first job? Hint: He Asked. was originally published in HackerNoon.com on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This past summer, we talked to over a hundred recruiters about when students do and don’t stand out.

Tis’ the season of career fairs for all the students across the US. The time where the smell of freshly printed resumes is in the air as thousands scurry from booth to booth trying to schmooze with their potential future. It is also the time when red bull is the only drink that pairs well with cuddling next to the computer screen while updating a resume that’s been collecting dust in the Documents directory.

You try to think hard about how to stand out at a career fair. But let us be real, you are more worried about the homework due tomorrow because you have been procrastinating. Career fairs seem like a magic lottery. You spin enough times, you get the job.

Well, we can’t tell you stop drinking red bull or procrastinating, but we can tell you how you can stand out.

Drum roll please…the secret to standing out is to ask engaging questions.

Wait, what? What does that even mean? Seems so obvious, but here’s why it’s not:

• Some students don’t bring their resumes. About 50% recruiters that we talked to said they encountered this situation multiple times.
• Some students talk to recruiters and ask them what the company does. Can you imagine going to Google and asking them what Google is? If you talk to a company, do your research. No excuse.
• Some students ask questions they can find the answers to on the company’s website. Hold on, let me google that for you. Whenever you hear a recruiter responding to you with “you can look on our website to find xyz”, then you probably asked one of these questions.

As much as recruiters want to give students benefit of the doubt, it is surprising how often some students do not even have the basics down. At the end of the day, a recruiter is going to talk hundreds of students — all of you will have similar backgrounds. After all, you *do* go to the same school and take the *same* classes.

So beyond the basics, how do you stand out?

The best way to stand out is to make yourself memorable in the 2–5 minutes you are talking to an engineer (if you are a eng fair) or a recruiter. By engaging, I mean engaging to the person you are talking to. People love talking about themselves and their company, so if you can leave a conversation making that person feel great, then they have a great impression about you and are more likely to remember you. All recruiters we talked to had a couple of memorable experiences talking to students who later became employees.

Here’s a list of 8 questions that are recruiter and engineer approved:

• Describe your day to day
• Describe your favorite work project
• Have you worked at a different company before? How does it compare to COMPANY NAME?
• Tell me more about what your team works on?
• Tell me about the most difficult challenge you faced at work?
• If you could pick 3 words to describe the vibe at COMPANY NAME, what would they be?
• If I’m interested in [Mobile dev, AI, ML, etc], what are some cool initiatives the company is taking in these areas?
• How much independence/autonomy/ownership do I get as an intern? Tech companies love this question because it signals that you are interested in being proactive.

Before you end your conversation, ask when you would expect to hear back from them. That way you know how long to expect to wait.

Happy job hunting!

Wait… before you leave, do you want a free resume review by ex-Uber, FB engineer?

Yes? Well, we got you covered. BeeHyve offers free resume reviews on our platform. BeeHyve is a tech focused, career prep community of students and new grads. We got you covered with job and interview resources crowd-sourced from around the web, free resume reviews, and cool job opportunities at tech companies in the US.

Get your resume reviewed here. You must have a BeeHyve Account & submit the form to get a review.

Career Fair: What 100 recruiters say to do to stand out. was originally published in HackerNoon.com on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Would you be able to tell if you were chatting with a human or computer on the other end? More and more people are failing the famous Turing test, and I’m convinced the next billion dollar business is being built because of it.

Maybe Agent Q will be one of them. Agent Q is at the forefront of Artificial Intelligence technology — building applications to help businesses connect with their customers.

We had an awesome time chatting with the founder of Agent Q, Remi Cossart about all things AI, how his startup got started, and what they are working on. Beyond the sci-fi possibilities, Agent Q is focused on using AI in practical applications today.

One of the most fascinating things about Agent Q is that it’s a small team! Not only do they have a sophisticated AI powered chat bot, but they also have applications for iOS, Android, Web, and widgets that go on to commerce websites. Find out how they have such incredible impact with a small team.

Agent Q is actively hiring through BeeHyve Careers! Apply to today through the BeeHyve Career Prep Community.

Artificial Intelligence beyond by the buzzword, #RealTalk with Agent Q was originally published in HackerNoon.com on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Finally, you are ready to apply for internships. You have your fundamentals down and your resume in tip top shape. Now, you might be asking, what strategy do you use when finding opportunities? Should you apply everywhere and anywhere? Where should you interview first? There’s really no right or wrong way to go about the process, but to get to that point, you have to find opportunities. We discuss several powerful channels you can use to find internship opportunities.

Your Network — As a Referral

Referrals are the most powerful ways to find and land opportunities. If you are lucky to know someone at a place where you wish to work, then take advantage of that opportunity. This can even be a friend at your school that has previously interned at said company. Companies like to source referrals because indirectly, your referral is vouching for you. It is a high-quality filter for recruiters and another data point as to whether you would be a good fit for the company. Now, this does not mean that if you were not referred, you have a lower chance of passing an interview or being a great employee. Statistically, referral programs have proven worthwhile to companies which is why they pour out incentive bonuses to their employees for referrals. If you are lucky to have this opportunity, take it.

School Career Fairs & Job Boards

Typically, your school will have its own engineering career fair and job board. If you have a career fair, it typically will get crowded with all the big tech companies (Facebook, Google, etc) having huge lines. I’d always recommend going to a career fair in person rather than skipping to apply to these opportunities through job boards. It shows that you care and have put in effort to learn about the company. Especially, if you speak to a recruiter or an engineer in person rather than just apply through a school job board. It helps associating a name to a face and you are more likely to be remembered or noticed. In the case you go to the career fair, I would recommend making a list of companies you are interested in. If you have companies on the list that you know will get crowded, show up early to the fair and chat with them first. When speaking to a recruiter or an engineer from a company, keep in mind that they will probably talk to hundreds of other students who are going to ask very similar questions. Some engaging questions you could ask engineers are:

1/ What was your favorite project that you have worked on at Company X?
2/ What is your day to day like?

People will remember how you made them feel, rather than what you talked about.

Your friend’s school career fair & school job board

This may seem a bit odd at first, but if your school doesn’t happen to have a career fair or job board, and you have a friend whose school does, then take advantage of that. There’s nothing that prevents you from going to that career fair or in the least, utilizing the school job board to find an opportunity. I have a friend who used another friend’s job board and found an internship by applying online through this channel. You have to get creative and hustle when you need to.

School Departments

School departments will often maintain their own sections of the school website if not their own separate website. Some departments will offer summer internships — but this is often less known than company internships. This is the strategy that worked for me my freshman year. I found an internship over the summer in our Plant Sciences department and worked as a bioinformatics intern. I got experience in processing/coding with genetic data, free housing, and got paid (win, win, and win!). This, later, helped me land an internship at Facebook. I would recommend looking at your school job boards or department job boards for any summer opportunities.

Hackathons

Recently, hackathons have gained a rise in popularity especially in the software/tech community. One of the great aspects of hackathons is that there are a lot of hackathons every year that will cover the cost of transportation and housing. By participating in a hackathon, you kill 3 birds with one stone: you get to work on an awesome project (you can put on your resume), you can meet other people (expand your network), and you can indirectly find job opportunities.

If you are interested in going this route, here are sites where you can find hackathons:

• Mlh.io: Major League Hacking is one of the biggest hackathon organizations. You will find plenty of hackathon events here.
• Hackalist: Also another great resource — allows simple filtering options for hackathons that are free, reimburse travel, have prizes, etc.

Cold Reach outs

If you are having trouble finding opportunities that you are interested in or want through your network and school, then another great option is cold reach outs. They may seem intimidating, but oftentimes, people are more than willing to help if you ask in the right way.

The best way to do cold reach outs is to find something that you have in common or offer something first. Don’t ask for the job indirectly, but rather, focus on learning more about the company and culture. You can’t expect someone to go out of their way and refer you, when you haven’t given them a reason to and they barely know you.

Here are several ways to connect with someone who you don’t know:

1/ Find someone at the company who is an alumni of your school. When you reach out to them, introduce yourself and tell them that you are currently a student at their alumni school and are interested in learning more about their experience at company XYZ.

2/ Find someone at the company that you have mutual connections with. This is easy to see on LinkedIn. See if you can get your mutual connection to introduce you with the goal of learning more about the company.

2/ Find someone at the company who is in your role, and see if you have anything in common ( hobbies, groups, etc). You can introduce yourself and connect with them on a personal level that way.

3/ Find university recruiters at the company and e-mail them. This has a lower probability of success compared to a career fair or a school job board, but it’s worth a try. Reach out, introduce yourself, and tell them why you would be excited to be considered for an opportunity at company XYZ. On the plus side, this saves recruiters time since you just told them that you are interested by e-mailing them.

Again, remember, your goal is to learn about the company and job, not to directly ask for a job. An opportunity will arise as a byproduct of doing this.

Offer your skills for free

Lastly, if you are having trouble finding job opportunities through any of the above channels, you may just need to gain more experience or expand your network. A great way to do both is to take the opportunity to work for free this summer. Although you may not be paid money-wise, you are being paid in a lot of other ways. You get experience that you can put on your resume, and you expand your network, and you get a reference which can later turn into a bigger opportunity.

Some ideas:

• Someone in your network or family who is in need of a website
• A local business that’s in need of a website
• Your school departments — reach out to your school departments and see if they need help over the summer

Best of luck internship hunting!

Get your resume reviewed for free!

#OFFER

As a part of running this blog series, we are proud to announce that BeeHyve is offering free resume reviews! Our team consists of engineers and product managers from Facebook, Uber, and Microsoft. In total, we have reviewed over 300+ resumes, and are offering to pass our knowledge to you.

#ASK

To get your resume reviewed by me and the team:

• Sign up for BeeHyve at www.beehyve.io. We ask that you give our community a try. It will only help you prepare for your interviews!
• Add one awesome resource to a community of your choice.
• Send an e-mail to friends@beehyve.io with your resume, your BeeHyveusername, and the resource you shared on BeeHyve.

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, unlike Oprah or the genie in a bottle, we can not guarantee that you will get a job with our resume reviews or by just reading this blog.

Author: Vera | LinkedIn

Follow us on Facebook

How to Land a Tech Internship — Part III — Finding Opportunities was originally published in HackerNoon.com on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the most powerful things about the “Cloud”, is the fact that a person with a laptop, an idea, and some hustle can use the exact same tools as big companies — personalized recommendations, image recognition, and even cucumber sorting are now available to everyone! You don’t need a huge server farm and a PhD in Matter-Anti-Matter reactions to make something awesome!

Checkout tips on getting started and breaking into Machine Learning with Google’s Product Lead for Google Cloud and Machine Learning — Amit Pande

Here are links to everything we talked about and more!

• Google Cloud
• YouTube Video Library Announcement Blog
• YouTube Video Library
• Tensor Flow
• Image Net
• Zillow

And more importantly Cucumber sorting ;) —

Happy Building!

Team at BeeHyve

PS : There are tons of companies looking for folks with Machine Learning interests and backgrounds. Check them out in our Career Prep community.

Google + Machine Learning + Getting Started = Awesomeness, and Good Cucumbers was originally published in HackerNoon.com on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Having graduated from one of the most competitive (yet sheltered) high schools in the nation, I had no idea what to expect in college. In high school, my largest passion outside of school was swimming. It gave me a drive and motivation to get out of bed with a goal in mind every morning. However, as my final high school swim season came to an end, so did much of my motivation. Still just a senior in high school, I felt a sense of dullness in my life and wondered if I would ever feel the same drive that I used to feel. Would I be able to find a new passion? Where will college take me?

As a high school senior, I knew that I needed to find a passion that will always push me to my full potential. Something that will always gives me the motivation to improve myself like swimming did in high school. Growing up in the heart of the Silicon Valley, one thing I came to realize is that technology is ever-growing. I thought that since technology never stays the same, it just might be what I’m looking for. This is what led me to choose computer science as my field of study at Cal Poly SLO.

“One thing I came to realize is that technology is ever-growing”

At first, I was unsure about whether I made the right choice because I didn’t have much prior experience in coding. I was afraid that everyone else would be better than me, leaving me in the dust. However, I came to acknowledge that not having this prior knowledge wasn’t a handicap — in fact, it was in many ways, an advantage. Sure, classes were tougher for me than many of the other students who have been coding for most of their lives. That only means the learning curve for me is that much steeper. With so much to learn and so much to improve on, my passion for my field of study took flight.

I aspired to explore as many aspects of computer science as I possibly could. Throughout my freshman year, I became a director of Cal Poly’s first ever hackathon club (SLO Hacks), co-founded an IEEE honor society chapter, and soon after the year ended, I found myself here in San Francisco as a software engineering intern at BeeHyve. Our mission at BeeHyve is to revamp education by connecting students around the world. Over the past couple of months, the team and I have built an active community of ten thousand students, sharing and utilizing student recommended resources for a large variety of computer science topics. This is the kind of change that I thrive for and makes me want to get out of bed every morning.

As my journey at BeeHyve wraps up, I’m excited to see what the future holds. Although I’ve learned more than I could ever hope for in the past couple of months, I know I’m just getting started. Working at a startup taught me that focus and hard work is the key to finding your passion. Next quarter, I’m taking an Object Oriented Programming course, and I’m looking forward to using the rapidly growing platform that I helped build.

I hope this helped someone, somewhere!

Best of luck, Justin

If you’re studying or interested in CS, checkout BeeHyve — www.beehyve.io. I’d love to hear what you think @BeeHyveBuzz on Twitter!

By Justin Mo, a rising computer science sophomore at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Connect with me through Linkedin, Facebook, and Email!

What are you most afraid of? was originally published in Student Voices on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Who are you and what is your Background?

I’m Joe-Bernick Rameau, and I’m a self-taught software engineer from Jacmel, Haiti.

Born and raised in Haiti, I started programming at the age of 13 (2008) when my mother brought home her first work computer. I started by playing games on Miniclip until one day I decided to create my own Miniclip, even though I knew nothing about web development. It was really hard for me because none of my friends liked computer science, but I still made it. I even failed most of my classes at school because I was so into it. I used webs.com to create http://gamestaken.webs.com, which one day became http://gamestaken.com. It’s now down because I got hacked internally by my co-founder who started working on it with me (long story).

During those 9+ years, I did a lot of freelance and created products on platforms like CodeCanyon (Envato) and through my own personal agency (Crakken). Though these, I was able to sell my own stuff. This is when my parents started to realize how good technology can be as a career. However, they were still hesitant because it wasn’t stable. However, through this experience, I learned multiple languages, frameworks, and improved my English radically, but barely improved my connections. At the time, I was more into web development but last year, I decided to become a generalist and learn whatever I like. I realized I can learn anything, as long as I’m dedicated. This is when I got into 42 School USA, an amazing game changer in my life.

In Haiti, everyone believes in a diploma, even though it’s clear that if you don’t have the right connections, you’re not going to get a job. I never believed in that, so it was really hard to get support from my parents. It was tough for me, even now. I’m 22, and I’m always stressed because after all these years I still don’t have a stable job, even though I feel like I have enough experience to be at least a junior dev at a company. I was part of the inaugural class of 42, and most of my peers got a job while I’m still here trying my best. Since I don’t have a US green card, I’m never even given a chance and get rejected from the very beginning. But I have to stay strong, and keep hustling.

Eventually, I made a lot new friends at 42 Silicon Valley. Not only did I learn to code there, but I also learned to be a people person and a better teammate. Of course, it wasn’t always about code since we went to social events together. Those AFK moments and the people I meet are what makes the hustling so enjoyable.

Another parth that makes the experience more enjoyable is working out. I do calisthenics almost every day to stay healthy and to motivate others. That’s why I keep a profile on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justpull/. You can also find me on BeeHyve as r4meau or email me at r4meau@gmail.com.

What are you Building?

Right now, I’m working on a mobile app that can be of great help to the creative people in my country. I’ll post more about it on my blog soon (It’s a secret for now ;) ). At the moment, technology is not the biggest asset of Haiti, and I’m trying to change that. I’m also doing some freelance work online to support myself. I’m currently re-learning C++ (it’s been a long time since I’ve used it) so I can get back into competitive programming. I’m also learning visual art in a language called Processing, working on a school project (which is about creating my own shell in C), and learning little bits from here and there to stay in the loop (this is how I found out about BeeHyve). I blog about what I do at my website (https://rameau.me), and I post my open source projects on Github (https://github.com/r4meau).

Hacking in Haiti

I’ve got to say, it’s a hard commitment right now. I know very few people who code so the distraction is at its peak. It’s hard to balance your social life and work because there’s no direct relationship between those two.

The biggest challenge to me right now is to be taken seriously both by local and non local companies since I dropped out of college for an informal school called 42 (no teachers and no diploma). Thus, in a country that strongly believes in paper diplomas, it’s a big no-no.

Even though it has made some progress recently, Haiti is still an insecure place, even more for the locals than the tourists, so I stay at home. There’s not even a “Starbucks” like place where you could possibly meet another developer. I believe that hacking is sharing, but when you are all alone in your room, relying on just the internet without any hacktivities in the area, is it really hacking? I just try new things all by myself, and hope one day I’ll be able to put my knowledge to great use out there. I just wish there were more hackathons and conferences around here.

How has BeeHyve helped?

Beehyve is a resource sharing website between students on any topic. If you are a student and that definition doesn’t make you want to join, please, rethink your life (just kidding :P). On a serious note though, this is a God send. I’m good at finding what I want on the internet. It’s only after finding Beehyve that I realized how long of a process it was by myself (opening a bunch of links in multiple tabs, reading them quickly to make sure it’s a good one for the subject…). Now imagine having another student do that for you and tell you why they recommend a particular resource with other students voting and commenting on it, all in one place. What else can you ask for? Link to my BeeHyve profile.

What is coding in Haiti like?

Even though it has made some progress about it recently, Haiti is still an insecure place, even more for the locals than the tourists, so I stay at home. There’s not even a “Starbucks” like place where you could possibly meet another developer. I believe that hacking is sharing, but when you are all alone in your room, relying on just the internet without any hacktivities in the area, is it really hacking? I just try new things all by myself, and hope one day I’ll be able to put my knowledge to great use out there. I just wish there were more hackathons and conferences around here.

Any tips on hacking with limited resources?

I was lucky to be able to afford a PC because I bet a lot of Haitians also love to hack. They just don’t have access to it. All I can say is, keep working really, really hard, because compared to some other people, you have to work twice as much as them to become who you want to be in this world. It’s the cold, harsh reality. It’s taking time but I’m pretty sure things will change. For now, if you have limited resources, the best thing to do is raise money (through crowdfunding) so you can afford the materials needed. Also, take full advantage of what you already have.

Hacking in Haiti was originally published in HackerNoon.com on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“What are you doing after college?” “Working at a small company” “Oh really, is it well established and does it pay well?”

These and similar questions have been asked to me by relatives, friends, and my parents. The prospect of financial stability is an attractive reward to four years of grueling college work. It’s the reason millions of immigrants came to America and continue to come to this day. All of them took a massive risk, leaving behind family in the hopes of a brighter future. So why should you be any different? You may say “but these are different times, we have solid foundations because of the sacrifices of our parents”. I say that’s exactly why we have an even greater opportunity.

As GaryVee puts it in his famous College Graduate video, this is NOT the time to get the job Mom always wanted you to get. This is NOT the time to try to maximize as much money as you can make so you can buy nice things. This is the time, however, to realize that you have a five-year window (22–27) for you to build up the life you’ve always wanted.

You’ll never be fully certain things will turn out great, but you shouldn’t confuse risk and uncertainty. Flying to Thailand with only a backpack and no plan introduces a lot of uncertainties, but it’s not exactly risky; you’ll have a great time regardless, in the backpacker capital of the world. Since most people fear the unknown, they wildly miscalculate opportunities. Especially early in your career, with little to no long term commitments, you have a very high risk tolerance. Recovering financially and reputationally is much easier for a twenty year old versus a forty year old with a mortgage and family. Don’t let uncertainty lull you into overestimating risk.

“I want to do this now so I can do this later”

For many new grads out of top institutions the next logical step is large tech companies, consulting firms, and business schools. These opportunities create optionality because of the expansive exposure to industry practices, professional networks, and coveted skills. However, this approach can often backfire as taking on options becomes more and more habitual. Acquiring stamps of approval and widening your safety net is a never ending endeavor. The comfort of a high-paying job at a prestigious firm surrounded by smart people is simply too much to give up. When that happens, the dreams that those options were meant to enable slowly recede into the background. Instead new grads need to understand that merely graduating from a top university or getting an offer at a top company already make them lucky drawers in the lottery of life; they don’t need anymore safety nets.

Sit down, be humble.

We can talk about choices, options, and above average starting salaries all day, but in the end the handcuffs are still made of gold. I realize how lucky I am every day to have gone to a prestigious university and have the opportunity to work in the most innovative companies in the world. Sit down for a second and think about the thousands of people who would kill to be in your place.

Choice is an extremely undervalued privilege. Because of financial, familial, or health reasons many people are simply happy with a salary. Last year, on my way from Palo Alto to SFO, my cab driver told me that success is luck times hard work, a realization he keeps close to heart. After immigrating from Turkey, where he was a coveted cargo ship captain, he started life in America as a low income cab driver. Slowly over the years he bought more and more cars and built up a black car business with his savings. One afternoon he picked up a customer and struck up a lively conversation. The customer liked him so much he hired him as the personal driver for a small startup in Palo Alto. Today, this cab driver is the sole provider of executive transport for Palantir, and is still friends with the same customer and CEO, Alex Karp to this day. Project some humility in your decisions and realize that your success isn’t only attributed to your own hard work. Most things in life are rarely as satisfying as helping others succeed.

In the end, people over stress the importance of a first job, especially in tech and Silicon Valley, where the average engineer turnover is 9 months. In the 7–8 years you have left in your twenties, that’s a fairly marginal timespan. Even the perfect job has it’s ups and downs, so don’t go too hard finding the best possible job, and good luck!

Best of luck!

Aatish

Few quotes that influenced my decision:

• “One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever gotten is there are always a lot of good choices, and then there’s the one you pick, commit to, and make great.” — Marissa Meyer
• “If I’d stuck to my original five-year plan when I was 18, I would have missed every great thing that ever happened to me” — Marissa Meyer
• “Most people want to be accepted, so they won’t take risks that could make them look crazy — which actually makes them wildly miscalculate risk.” — Sam Altman
• “If you graduate Stanford at 22 and Google recruits you, you’ll work a 9-to-5. It’s probably more like an 11-to-3 in terms of hard work. They’ll pay well. It’s relaxing. But what they are actually doing is paying you to accept a much lower intellectual growth rate. When you recognize that intelligence is compounding, the cost of that missing long-term compounding is enormous. They’re not giving you the best opportunity of your life. Then a scary thing can happen: You might realize one day that you’ve lost your competitive edge. You won’t be the best anymore. You won’t be able to fall in love with new stuff. Things are cushy where you are. You get complacent and stall.” — Peter Thiel

Helpful readings:

• http://blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades-are-short
• http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/5/25/desai-commencement-ed/#.WTg41k_m1zg.twitter
• https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/02/28/a-brief-history-of-existential-terror/

My name is Aatish Nayak (@nayakkayak, Aatish Nayak) and I’m a 2017 ECE grad from Carnegie Mellon, working at a startup called Skurt in LA. I previously interned at large tech companies and had the opportunity to go back. Find me on Linkedin — https://www.linkedin.com/in/aatishnayak/

To Big Company or To Small Company? That is the question. was originally published in HackerNoon.com on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

So, you’re considering working for a startup, but not sure if it’s the right move for you?

Hopefully my story can help provide some insight! As a disclaimer, I’m still far from an expert on the startup industry. However, I have had an amazing summer on our four person BeeHyve (BeeHyve.io) team, and would love to share how I ended up here / what I’ve learned from it!

As an intern, there’s probably a few general drawbacks when working for a new startup versus a more established company; these likely include a slight drop in pay, as well as an experience that may not speak as loudly on a resume at face value. However, I knew I wanted to learn a lot and needed to start somewhere — rather than focusing on a known name, I instead searched for passionate, helpful people, and definitely found those qualities during my interview process with Vera and Varun. Admittedly, I didn’t exactly know what the pros of working for a startup would be when I decided to intern with BeeHyve, but I’m happy to say I definitely do now! So, without further ado…

What you’ll hopefully gain from working for a small startup:

• An incredible learning experience!
• Fast paced work in a variety of areas
• Proximity to passionate people

Learnin’ a lot

If your startup experience is anything like mine, you will be put to work. And thank goodness for that! On a team of four, it’s impossible to get left behind or slide by unnoticed. You will certainly be challenged and probably be asked to do things you have little-to-no experience in doing before, but luckily your boss/mentor/fellow intern is only a seat away. Although I at first felt a bit over my head with very minimal web development background (i.e., I didn’t know what the jQuery ‘$’ was…), I was strongly encouraged to ask questions and soon found myself taking on new tasks with more confidence.

I definitely still get confused and make plenty of mistakes, but I know that they’ve allowed me to grow from here (my interview website; humor = 10/10, sub-sub-par understanding how to render any updated information) to lots of implementations of features on here (profiles, class-cards, inline-commenting, etc.), thanks to the support of my team.

Fast task turnover, and not just coding!

While interns at other companies have told me they know that their summer projects simply aren’t going to be used, I’ve been able to start each week by picking out new features, bug fixes, scoping exercises, or growth tasks that seem interesting to me, each with clear impact on the site and completed within a short time frame. Although I primarily write code, I’ve also been able to work on design, help plan and scope out potential features, participate in student interviews, work on growth, etc., and have loved being part of the broader picture of the company rather than simply being confined to one task area.

Surrounded by drive

Over the course of this summer, every week seemed more exciting than the last. We’d just put out new features, launched new classes, jumped in users — something in which we could clearly see where we improved for last week, and had a plan for where we wanted to go next. I’ve loved being around my team, who each seem to always be brimming with new ideas, and more impressively, a plan of action of how to get there. I’m not sure there’s been many weeks where Varun hasn’t said something along the lines of “I’m so pumped about this week! It’s gonna be huge!”, but I am sure I’ve always felt it.

All in all, I have had an amazing time with my first internship and learned an invaluable amount in regards to both coding and working on an effective, supportive team. I certainly had a lot of good circumstance in my ability to take this internship, including an open summer to focus on learning, as well as family in the bay who greatly helped with my transition out to the area. However, if you have found an opportunity that works for you and are looking to work in a fast paced and passionate environment, I highly recommend giving the small start-up experience a try! Good luck! :)

Still reading??? Found a cool startup that you think you can work for but need *more* convincing?

If your startup is one of the many on the western edge of this country, further perks include enjoying the beautiful sites and sounds of the western edge of this country!

Additionally, if your startup is public on the web, you may get to see people from across the globe using what you’ve helped create. Below is a screenshot of some of the user locations who were recently on BeeHyve. Pretty neat!

Alright that’s officially it — good luck again!

Checkout BeeHyve — www.beehyve.io . I’d love to hear what you think @BeeHyveBuzz on twitter

By Emi Jackson, rising Junior at the University of Michigan studying Computer Science. This is me on BeeHyve — https://www.beehyve.io/s/manila62 and on Linkedin — https://www.linkedin.com/in/emi-jackson-a313b7139/

Startin’ Up at a StartUp: Why I chose to work for BeeHyve for my first internship and what I’ve… was originally published in HackerNoon.com on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.