In these difficult times, many employers and organizations have rescinded their offers to interns and graduating students. Students have lost the opportunity to intern or work at their dream companies. Soon-to-be graduating students have lost their jobs that they were planning to start this summer. Many are left in disarray still waiting to hear back from companies that they had applied to with the intention of starting to work this summer. As hard as this might be, this summer is an awesome opportunity for university students to improve their skills and build up their portfolio to show off to employers in the future.
Here are 7 things that you can do this summer if you are without an internship or job.
1. Work on side projects and build your portfolio
This is the time to show your passion for your dream job by working on a project that you had always intended to work on but never got that chance. These side projects whether big or small will be a great opportunity to show your potential employers about your problem-solving skills, your technical understanding, and coding skills. Look out for our coming articles on some project ideas in software engineering, machine learning, data analytics and more.
2. Learn a new coding language, framework, or tool
Take advantage of this extra time during the summer and broaden your skillset. Is there a particular tool, language, or framework you see time and time again in the job description? If you are applying for jobs in software engineering, development, or data science, and don’t know what to learn next, here are a few languages that you can add to your arsenal.
- Python
- Java
- C/C++
- Javascript
- Go
- SQL
- Ruby
There are many resources that are available online for free to get started. Here are a few of our favorites:
3. Take an online course (in anything!)
If you would like to take a course for free online, now is the time to do it. Many online learning sites like Coursera, Udemy, iTunes University, Edx, etc allow you to audit the courses for free and take them from top universities. Coursera has been offering free certificates for about 85 courses for a limited time. Some of the top universities have great courses online that you can register and take for free directly from their website:
- MIT OpenCourseWare offers a variety of free online courses
- Carnegie Mellon University Open Learning Initiative
- Great article on the Top 500 Free CS Courses from US Universities
4. Get ahead with college credit
Most colleges are not offering on-site programs and courses this summer 2020, but they are making an effort to provide these courses online. If you are in college and you have the opportunity & the financial resources to take courses that can be included in your college credit, take these courses online. Many colleges accept credit transfer from an accredited college and similar course content. This may even help you graduate earlier and put you in a better place when life becomes a little normal with more job opportunities.
5. Create your personal page online
Summer is a great time to improve your online presence. If you don’t already have a personal page on the internet, now is the time. It is a great place to showcase to potential employers, colleagues, and others more about you. If you are interested in creating your own page online using your own url, you will need to do a few things
- Purchase a custom domain (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Domain.com)
- Utilize one of the popular website builders (Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, etc) or code your own using HTML, CSS, Javascript
- Publish your site on GitHub or GitLab pages (if you coded it)
- Connect your domain to the site
Another great way to showcase yourself online is by using a platform I created called Pralent. Even though you cannot connect a custom domain with Pralent, we make it easy (less than 5 minutes) to create your own personal page on the internet with your projects, experiences, interests and more. In the end, you will get your own Pralent url to show to the world.
6. Volunteer in your local community
While many of the traditional methods of volunteering may not be available at the moment, you can still take full advantage of this situation to help out in other ways that will still benefit you and your community. Reach out to the local businesses and see if your skills can be of any value to them. Help market their products and services, create a refreshed website or app for them, run an analysis on a potential market opportunity for them. Local businesses will definitely appreciate the support and help you are providing.
7. Spend time on side hobbies
Not everything you do this summer has to directly help you with potential job and internship opportunities in the future. Be sure to spend some time this summer on reconnecting with side hobbies that may have been lost in the midst of all the noise!
Top comments (1)
I definitely plan on trying to do all these things over the summer - so much to do, so little time!
Great tips!