October 2025

what i wish freshman me knew

Jake's Resume Template: If you're not using something similar, use it. overleaf link
LinkedIn Presence: Get your profile up with a professional headshot, 500+ connections, and all experiences up to date.
Take COMPE561: it's a CompE elective you can take as a CS elective and the professor is a full-time SWE. You build a full stack app as your one assignment.
Build real projects: no one cares about a YouTube tutorial project anymore. If you don't know what to do, build a full stack/SaaS project deployed on a personal domain with a logo & landing page that solves something (literally anything).
Take a Full Stack Web Dev Course: genuinely, school won't teach you what companies actually look for. Get ahead and learn full stack web dev through YouTube or Udemy.
COLD APPS ARE DEAD APPS: reach out to engineers at companies you want until you get a response. Set up a coffee chat, be genuine, and ask for a referral or if they have anyone else you can talk to. Submitting apps with no referral is like throwing your resume in the trash unless your resume is cracked.
Get experience early: reach out to professors for research, small startups for roles, and stay on the lookout for opportunities all the time.
Secret Sauce: there are many orgs supporting underrepresented groups in tech. If you are part of one, find your org. Look into: Management Leadership for Tomorrow, ColorStack, NSBE, Break Through Tech, Rewriting the Code, SHPE, and many more.
Apply to NSF REUs: paid summer-long research positions across the country that are often less competitive than internships and give great resume bullets and networks. If you haven't had an internship, seriously look into these — no one talks about them and it's insane 🤫
Recruiting map the recruiting calendar (Aug–Oct: apps; Sep–Nov: interviews; Dec–Feb: off-cycle). Reverse-plan study/projects so you're shipping by August, not starting in August.
Portfolio That Converts:pin 3 repos with: clear README, short Loom demo, live link, concise tech stack bullets, and a "what I learned" section. Make it easy to skim in 30 seconds.
Interview Practice System:30–45 min/day. Mix: 2 data structure reps, 1 systems read, 10 min behavioral story (STAR) refinement. Consistency beats cramming.
Ship Publicly:tweet/linkedin post with a 30–60s demo clip, 1 code snippet, and a takeaway. Visibility compounds and creates warm inbounds.
Join the Builders:go to hackathons/meetups. Aim to leave each event with new linkedin connections. Follow up within 24 hours with a concrete next step.
Resume Bullets:quantify with numbers and verbs: "reduced X from 120s → 8s (93%) by caching + batching; +18% activation". Cut filler; keep impact.
Track The Pipeline:simple sheet with company, contact, status, date, next action. If there's no next action, the task isn't done.
Daily 90-Min Block: 30m code, 30m learn, 30m network. Do it 5x/week for 12 weeks and you will feel the compound effect.