My Internship Search Experience (Summer 2025)

After switching majors from Civil Engineering to EE in my undergrad in Hong Kong, I crammed as many courses as I could in my undergrad to graduate within 4 years. Unfortunately, my lack of planning and constant procrasination meant that I had very little useful work experience and practical skills and by the time I graduated in 2024, I had no direction since I made no time to properly apply for a full-time job after grad in Hong Kong.

Therefore, I decided to pursue a master’s in CS as I wanted to work in the software industry in the US (also US + HK citizen). As usual, I procrasinated on the grad school application and ended up applying to the school with the easiest application process, which ended up being Boston University Metropolitan College (BU Met). I also chose BU Met as classes are at night, meaning I could work during the day as I naively assumed it would be quick to find a tech job in the US.

However, I quickly realized after like 15 job applications with 0 responses that it was much harder than I thought, especially a full time job w/ my limited experience. So, I decided I would target an internship instead. I naively decided to put off internship applications until I was “ready”, where I spent fall semester chasing certs like AWS SAA, making dumb personal projects, etc. instead of actually just applying to internships whilst there were tons of applications open.

You can go to bottom of page to see my resume, it’s pretty shit.

I wasted fall 2024 trying to feel ready and soon, it was the end of Janurary and I started noticing all my friends had secured their internships. I started to hit full panic mode and even though I felt unprepared, I brushed up my resume and started hitting the apply buttons on Feburary.

I started off spending lots of time on each application, trying to tailor my resume and cover letters for each company. I thought the time I spent in fall doing those certs and personal projects would make me stand out. Of course, this was all my stupid delusional bullshit and got hit with reality quickly with 0 interviews.

So, after the ~20ish applications, I gave up spending too much time tailoring my resumes and started to increase my application rate, where I soon started getting a few interview opportunities. Below are some interviews and noteworthy applications.

About

I applied to their devops intern position online as the job description sounded fairly simple: just know some basic concepts in CI/CD, know a programming language like Python, know Docker and a bit of Github workflow. Sounded something like I could perhaps do, I got a bunch of certs related to DevOps, I got a chance right…

Interview

First I had phone call w/ HR, which went smoothly and then I went to the technical interview. Holy shit did I fuck this up. It was a 1 hour in-person interview at their office, where the SWE director conducted the interview. The very first thing was a simple whiteboard interview regarding Git branching. Prior to this interview, I had 0 clue about Git branching (my fault I’m dumb), so I tried to make some bullshit up. He smelt it right away and ended up scrapping the whiteboard part. After this I knew it was over after 20 minutes in but we had to continue because he’s too nice to say you suck.

Next, perhaps giving me a chance to redeem myself, he started asking me technical questions, some situational (something like how to setup versioning CI/CD w/ Github actions), some knowledge questions based on things on my resume (eg. AWS and Terraform trivia) since I had those on my resume. I ended up doing pretty poorly on a lot of the questions, where sometimes I would try to make an answer up even if I didn’t know it and I could just feel his disappointment. At the end, I asked how can I improve (he didn’t really give me a response) but only thing he said was I did okay on the AWS questions which yay for me.

I ended up getting a quick rejection email like two days afterwards, but huge lessons learned from this interview both on the tech side and for future interviews, where I learned to just say “I don’t know” instead of trying to make shit up and I realize I am missing a lot of basic practical tech skills and knowledge.

I do feel though the role description sounded much simpler than the actual interview, but that’s probably a me issue.

About

This was for a full-time job and was fully remote, and as someone who loves using Linux (NixOS btw), I thought working at Canonical would be the dream so I immediately hit the apply button. What proceeds is a very dumb application process. Cannonical’s horrible application process is well documented on Reddit, where this sums it up well.

Application Process

I think I first filled out a quick form with my resume. A week later the hiring lead reviewed my resume and emailed for next steps.

First round is a “written interview”, where I had to answer a bunch of written questions. Quite a few asked for my high school performance, which is fucking stupid given that for most people applying high school was many years (perhaps decades) ago. They asked about my high school ranking in language and arts, which not only did we not have rankings, but is also completely irrelevant imo.

But I am dumb so I spent quite some time writing detailed answers to all their questions, trying to remember wtf I did in highschool. Afterwards, I got an email to take the dumbest part of the application, a fucking psychometric assessment. It was like 1 hour long with a bunch of pointless exercises you’d see in IQ tests or something.

I got rejected after the psychometric assessment and didn’t make it to the technical interview and take-home tests. Not a big deal, I just don’t understand the high school questions and pyschometric assessment (and I’m not alone there’s a lot of online posts sharing same sentiment).

About

This was another application process that I hated. I really wanted this role as I thought it would look really good working at a well-known bank like Citizens.

Application Process

First round uses Hirevue, which absolutely fucking sucks. They send you a series of questions that you’ll answer via video with a pre-determined time. The questions are the basic HR screening ones, except since there is no human feedback it felt so awkward and I really struggled as I have never done anything like this before. I did pass but I highly doubt a real human saw the video answers.

Second round was a online assessment (OA) with technical questions. It was a timed, 75-minute test and I think I did okay on it. What really sucks was how I felt kinda lead on. We were supposed to get a decision like 1 week after the OA, but they sent two emails saying they needed to extend their decision, so I was starting to think I might have a chance. I was rejected soon after.

About

They’re multi-billion dollar international hedge fund, enough said so I knew I had 0 chance but just wanted to see.

Interview

First round was a 60 min OA, which was just like 3 easy Leetcode questions. I’m not particularly good at Leetcode, but they were fine as they were in easy category.

2nd round is HR Zoom behavioural interview for around 45 minutes, nothing special except I did it at 4 AM due to timezone differences so that was fun.

3rd round is a 1 hour technical where you share any technical project you did and they would ask you questions about your project. After reading there would be a total of 7 rounds, I ended up dropping out as I was starting to feel burnt out and didn’t want to prepare for a long presentation. This was a very dumb mistake in hindsight, as this would’ve been valuable experience for at least some practice.

About

I actually applied to 2 roles, Cloud Solution Architect (CSA) Intern and Tech Specialist Intern. Both are more business related (sales) roles, one is pre-sales and one is post-sales. In the first round they made me choose one to interview for and I chose CSA as it sounds more related to what I know.

Important to note it is Microsoft Hong Kong, where their branch has no dev team afaik and is mostly sales related so should be way less competitive than Microsoft US (but still seemed to have tons of applications based on how slow they responded to me).

Interview

Also worth noting that since I graduated from HKUST, it gave me advantage since HKUST is well known in Hong Kong but not in US or anywhere else.

First round was interview with recruiter, which was just a 15 minute talk about my motivation and background, super simple. It took them like a month for them to schedule the 2nd round and they ghosted me for quite some time, so even though they said I passed I thought they quitely reverted their decision.

Second round was with a cloud specialist (forgot exact role), but the interview was so chill. I just shared about my academic background, interests, personal projects and certs, and then he spent the rest of the time sharing about the role and talking some business (I think we ended up talking about BlackRock buying CK Hutchison’s panama port lol). He spent more time talking than me, which was really cool but I zoned out since it was at 11 pm (timezone diff).

Third round was a bit more technical with their Devops and Cloud Architect Leader. He dove into more technical aspects of my projects and certs, asking me some knowledge questions about AWS, Terraform, Git, etc. Pretty simple questions, definitely easier than Marble Technologies and I think answered them all well (eg. what happens if you make manual change and run terraform apply, why use something like dynamodb with terraform). I think main thing that he liked was my personal project, where I dove a bit into the AWS components (eg. why use API gateway, SQS), advantages and disadvantages of my serverless architecture, scalability, etc. Not like I had a complex project, but I think for HK it seems like CS students tend to have less personal projects than US students (students just grind exams) so somehow mine stood out perhaps? Then again this isn’t even a dev role so not like that part matters I guess.

Fourth round was with the head of customer success, big dog. This didn’t really feel like an interview, he just asked a bit about my background and interests. He asked if I reached out to previous HKUST alumnis in Microsoft, which I obviously didn’t. In the end he said I can only have 1 question, give him a good one. In typical me fashion, I gave him a dumb one where I asked why people would choose Azure over AWS, even though I literally asked this question in the previous 2 rounds as well.

I felt pretty confident, as I met the head of customer success, surely I got the role right? Well I finished the interview around end of March and got 0 communication for 5 weeks (follow-up emails ignored). At mid-April, the web portal said I was rejected, but it didn’t hurt as much since I had an offer from Granite Telecommunications. So that was it right?

Nope. Right before I was about to fly from Boston to Hong Kong, I got a email with an offer letter mid-May. My guess is someone must have renegaded and I was the second choice. At first I told my dad just to have a bit of a laugh, but the moment he heard Microsoft he was yelling at me to renegade my internship with Granite and go work at Microsoft. I won’t lie having Microsoft on my resume would sound dope, but given that it was a non-dev role, I was more inclined to stay with Granite. I spent one day thinking it over but ended up just going with my guts. At the time of writing remains to be seen whether I will regret this or not.

It was evident they were quite desperate (hence why I’m 99% sure someone renegaded) as the recruiter called me after I sent my rejection and the offer email specified I needed to send my decision in like 2 days. Overall though, I really enjoyed the interviews, but I think the role wasn’t right for me.

About

One of the many applications I was spamming on LinkedIn, didn’t think they would actually interview me. HR responded with email for interview and I know she actually read my resume because she sent the email to the address on my resume instead of the different one I put on the web portal, huge respect especially after finding out afterwards that they got 6000+ applications.

Interview

First was a basic HR phone call, basic check just asked about academic background, what programming languages I use, etc. Soon got scheduled for a interview with the software lead (and still my current boss).

I spent hours practicing Leetcode (and still suck), thinking about all the failed interviews I had, thinking about how Microsoft was still ghosting me, and prepared myself for a grueling interview…

Except I sat in the Teams call for 15 minutes before HR told me he was sick and had to reschedule. After reschedule, he was still sick but someone’s gotta interview interns. Interview was simple, literally first question he asked was what is a binary tree. 0 coding, just explain some basic concepts. Really simple, although I actually didn’t do that well (too nervous and forgot an answer to one easy question I forgot). Somehow, I got an offer like a few days later, I guess maybe they felt bad for making me wait before the reschedule. Got the offer mid April, I put it down to luck.