No Intern Experience - Serious Disadvantage?

Connolly91

Hello everyone,

I have been trying to acquire a summer internship placement since January, I am a 3rd year in Computing and while it is not required for the completion of my degree I believe it would go a long way to getting a job when I graduate.

I have done my best to follow all advice, sent out over a hundred e-mails, spoke to my college lecturer's for contacts and anything else I could think of. As of yet I have not managed to get a placement, and its certainly isn't looking too good so far.

So my question is, how much of a disadvantage is having no internship experience once you graduate? I have seen some job advertisements stating you need either 1 years work experience or some internship experience for a junior role, although I am not speaking of graduate programs.

As for myself I plan on applying to this years Google summer of code and volunteering at a coder dojo somewhere in Dublin(I'll be doing this regardless how things work out by summer) if they'll have me. If the case is that the summer of code doesn't work out, I'll be putting my time into some open source projects over the summer.

Giblet

You're doing enough already, most places I know won't accept interns, and I don't think I know anyone who has ever done one. Doing open source is more than most grads.

jester77

I wouldn't worry about it at all. Make sure your github account is in good shape and contribute to projects you are interested in. I would find this better than a summer internship.

Tar.Aldarion

Work placement for 6 months was part of my course and was looked on very well. However instead of working those days, as others have said, do up some code.