- Four former Google interns shared tips on securing their internships and converting to full-time employees.
- They emphasized preparing early on and aiming for underclassman-targeted internships.
- Some also suggested networking and asking questions, and pointers for dealing with imposter syndrome.
With internship application season in full swing, you might be wondering how to make the most of your summer fellowship — and how to turn it into a full-time offer.
Business Insider spoke to four former Google interns who turned their summer gigs into full-time job offers at the tech giant. They shared their process of landing internships at Google and advice on landing a permanent offer.
Landing an internship at a Big Tech company is highly competitive, but having one on your résumé can help you get in early. Google offers general online guidance for navigating the hiring process, including practicing coding on platforms like CodeLab, Quora, and Stack Overflow. It also suggests keeping your résumé to one page and considering skills relevant to the role.
The tech giant also provides more customized guidance to specific programs, like its Student Training in Engineering Program (STEP), which is a popular intern option for college students.
If you want direct insight from the perspectives of those who landed internships and turned them into full-time jobs, keep reading.
Nancy Qi
Nancy Qi graduated in the winter and plans to return to Google full-time in June after spending three summers there as an intern, the first two with STEP and the last with Google's Software Engineering internship.
Her primary advice: start early.
Qi said she started taking data structure classes in high school at a community college and was practicing with leet code the summer before she started college, well before she had interviews lined up.
When Qi started sending out applications in the fall of her freshman year, she said her résumé mainly had website initiatives and leadership experience for volunteering clubs from high school. She said she also had some part-time tutoring experience teaching math and English,
"I think at that age, you're not expected to have so much CS experience or coding experience," Qi said. "So I think if you have some leadership experience or experience that shows your character, I think that's important at that time."
During her internship, Qi said she thinks her strong suit was building relationships with her teammates by getting lunch with them every day. She said doing helped to create "team chemistry" and she also said it helped her feel excited for work and "motivated to pump out code."
Islina (Yunhong) Shan
Islina (Yunhong) Shan interned at Google three times, beginning in the summer of 2022. She's set to graduate in May from an accelerated computer science Master's program at Duke University and start a full-time role as a software engineer at the tech giant this summer.
Shan first participated in STEP and later in the Software Engineering Internship, which is a more competitive program geared toward technical development.
When she applied for her first internship, Shan said she had some hackathon experiences and some technical projects from school. After she sent her résumé, she was invited to two rounds of final interviews, both of which were technical and back-to-back, she said.
Her advice to interns hoping to secure full time jobs: choose a team during the match process that you're actually interested in.
"Interest is really important in driving you to finish the project," Shan said.
She also said it's important to choose a team with a manager you can see yourself working with because you'll have to communicate with them regularly and set expectations. When she first started her internship, she said she set unrealistic goals. Once she adjusted them, she started seeing more progress. Shan suggested seeking help if needed, adding that Google engineers tend to be friendly.
Lydia Lam
Lydia Lam graduated from college in 2024 and participated in three Google internships, beginning with a STEP internship in 2021.
In her internship résumé, Lam included a seven-week Google program for high-school graduates called the Computer Science Summer Institute. She also had experience with a summer program for girls who code and a tech consulting student organization that she joined during her first semester of college.
Lam also recommended applying early in the recruiting cycle and said programs geared toward first and second-year students tend to be more aligned with that experience level.
Lam said "strong engineering practices" are highly valued at the company and mentioned feeling imposter syndrome and wanting to impress her internship host. However, she said asking questions sooner than later can help projects get done more quickly.
"It's much more efficient to ask someone else who knows a lot more than you try to figure it out longer," Lam said.
She also suggested "producing a lot of artifacts," whether designs or other "tangible pieces of work," that can help show your skill set and contributions.
Tawfiq Mohammad
Tawfiq Mohammad interned for two summers at Google before becoming a full-time software engineer at the tech giant.
He said the summer after his first year in college, he didn't have any internships, so he took summer classes and did his own projects at home, like a gadget that read the license plate on his car and opened the garage without him having to press a button.
Mohammad's biggest advice for incoming interns is to be prepared for imposter syndrome. Mohammad said the "biggest block" for him at first was being scared to do anything, and he suggested tuning out those negative feelings as much as possible.
"You're going to feel very out of place initially," Mohammad told BI. "I honestly felt like I had no idea what I was doing."
He said interns should set a goal to "learn as much as possible" from the more experienced employees and try to believe that they, too, felt like they didn't fully "know what they were doing" at one point.
"They're really smart so you want to absorb as much information as you can from them," Mohammad said.
He also suggested thinking "outside the box."
"You're going to be given a project that summer and try to own that project. Try to own it from A to Z," Mohammad said.
He also recommended networking with other interns and team members, adding that Google provides a number of opportunities to do so.
"It's good to build up a good network of successful people and it's just good to network with people that are farther along the career path than you," Mohammad said.