Co-ops--Internships--Need prayers/good thoughts from y'all...

[Mary in GA]

Ds, now at Georgia Tech, has applied for several summer internships and is about to interview for co-op positions. Please put him in your prayers as this is REALLY needed financially! He has the HOPE scholarship so far, but it does not cover everything. He has (what I think) are so many interviewing plusses. He is a select soccer coach--he deals with irate parents, high pressure situations, injured kids. He has been a tutor in the smaller university he transferred from. His CS classes from that university did not transfer, but he tested out of the first 3 programming classes at GT. The tests were on JAVA which he has never used; he studied for 3 hours and passed--it's just experience with programming in general--he loves programming and has done many projects on his own. The competition is stiff! He is so motivated and works very hard; I really want this for him! Thank you all for listening.

Mary

[Sharon in MD]

Hi Mary,

My thoughts and prayers are with your son! God knows the plan that He has for him and it will be accomplished!

Hang in there!
Sharon

[Mary in GA]

Thank you. Sharon :-)

Mary

[Kathy in Richmond]

Hope everything works out for the best for him!

My husband graduated from GT years ago and also had to work to put himself through. It's a terrific school!

~Kathy

[Brenda in MA]

Praying here, too, Mary! He sounds like he's quite well qualified and a nice guy all around. I hope the prospective employers see that as well.

Brenda

[Mary in GA]

Thank you!

Dh and I are both GT dropouts! I think ds is going to do better.

Mary

[Nan in Mass]

Good thoughts coming your way!

[Piano&ViolinMom]

Mary, praying here, too!

[Mary in GA]

Thank you so much!

Mary

[Leonor]

Praying for your son and you.

[Mary in GA]

After jumping through all the advisement hoops, ds began interviewing for co-op jobs about 2 weeks ago. GTRI, the research inst at school, offered him a position and he took it. It turns out to be one of the better paying co-op jobs. He'll start next semester.

I was kind of surprised, ds told me that his interviews consisted of a lot of questions about actual skills. They ask how the candidate would go about programmming this or that in one language or another. The GTRI interview was skills and problem solving ability. For some questions if he didn't immediately know the answer, they would offer select hints and see how quickly he arrived at the solution. He was interviewed by 3 people at once and said that the people were nice but he felt really rattled after the interview, like he was totally unprepared. I'm passing this along in case others here have dc that will be looking for cs internships or co-ops. Interviewers are very interested in projects the student has done, esp if they have posted something in the public domain i.e. on Source Forge or something. Ds was told by some interviewers that they actually checked out the code for some of the major projects he listed on his resume.

Thank you all again for your good thoughts and prayers!
Mary

[Brenda in MA]

In my experience in engineering, interviews where technical questions are asked are fairly common. It's hard to prepare for these unless the interview is for a very specific job. I think prospective employers are trying to gauge the applicant's thought process as well as how he/she does under a bit of pressure.

Congrats again to your son. They must have liked him & his abilities since it looks like he went through a pretty thorough screening process. This experience will help him with future interviews for full-time positions down the road.

Brenda

[FloridaLisa]

Woohoo! Congratulations to your ds. Praise the Lord for His provision.

:party:


Lisa

[Mary in GA]

In my experience in engineering, interviews where technical questions are asked are fairly common. It's hard to prepare for these unless the interview is for a very specific job. I think prospective employers are trying to gauge the applicant's thought process as well as how he/she does under a bit of pressure.Brenda

I'm sure you're right. I was just a bit taken aback since your usu student applying for co-op is a sophomore. How much technical knowledge of engineering can they be expected to have? Computer programming knowledge is easier to acquire on one's own I would think than engineering knowledge. I've been out of the work world a long time!

Mary

[Kareni]

Mary,

What great news. Thanks for the update!

Regards,
Kareni

[Nan in Mass]

I can see why they might want to look at some of his code, since they will have to interface with and modify any code he writes for them at some future date. If it is ungraceful, it will be a bear to work with. It might be important to check out his style for the very reason that code is so easy to teach oneself.

Congratulations!
-Nan

[Mary in GA]

Thanks for the support ladies!

Mary