Last year, I applied to over 400 internships.
A LinkedIn post by Sammy Tourani, . Post 64 of 90, newest first.
Last year, I applied to over 400 internships.
This year, I'm only applying to 10...
Here's an uncomfortable truth: Mass applying doesn't make you look hardworking. It makes you look desperate.
And desperation is the WORST thing you can communicate to an employer.
It felt good applying for so many internships...But here's what actually happened:
• Every application I made was generic
• I had no time to actually get GOOD at anything
• I was competing with 1,000 other people doing the exact same thing as me
• I became forgettable
This year, I'm doing something completely different — and I'm not gatekeeping a single thing.
Here's what I'm doing for each of my 10 target companies:
💡✅ I'm spending 15 hours (minimum) studying each company's actual problems — not their careers page; their GitHub issues, LinkedIn posts, and product gaps.
💡✅ I'm going to build something for them before applying. A design mockup. A code solution. A market analysis. Something that proves I already think like someone on their team.
💡✅ I'm going to use Boardy to reach out to 5–7 people at each company; not to "network", but to see if I'd actually even fit there.
Last year, I got 8 interviews from 400 applications (2% hit rate).
This year, I've only had 4 coffee chats with people at target companies — and 2 have already offered to walk my application directly to hiring managers.
Stop spraying and praying, people. Start building in public. Start acting like someone who belongs there...not someone scratching to get in.
The internship you want doesn’t go to the person who applied first.
It goes to the person they can’t imagine NOT hiring.
#Internships #CareerAdvice #Boardy #JobSearch #SoftwareEngineering #BuildInPublic #Networking #Motivation #EarlyCareer
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