The Unexplored Co-Op Challenges of a Computer Science Major
Photo By: Mark Macwana
The Drexel University co-op process isn’t easy for any major. But for computer science majors, there should be more awareness for the first and second-year students preparing to apply for their first co-op about the extra steps required to search and apply for a position before obtaining it.
Many CS students currently on co-ops or working part-time jobs after completing their co-op, discussed with me a challenging aspect of their co-op interviewing process they didn’t perceive as they targeted the positions within their reach and skillset.
A third-year CS major on a four-year track who now has a software engineering position at the company she did her only co-op at, mentioned additional tests and preparation methods she took to ensure the employer would hire her.
“It was very stressful, I had to do a lot of preparation, practice coding problems and a lot of practice interviewing myself between my friends and I to see where I can improve.”
“Was there anything in the job description or interview questions that tripped you up as the employer talked?” I added.
“Most of the time in the interview, I would ask what they were looking for out of the person they were hiring. They didn’t want too much knowledge or expertise and were ready to hire. However, it kind of contradicted the coding exams that were given along with online assessments before the interview was actually taking place.”
Drexel’s programs may or may not go into depth on how to help students prepare for tests like those to get the position they want. What makes it more stressful is that students might need to balance finals or exams aside from preparing for an exam to get a co-op position.
There is also the concept of having two rounds of interviews. If an employer likes a student in an initial interview they might call back for a second round to learn more about them as a rising professional, which students might not perceive as they are searching for positions to apply for.
A second-year CS major currently in a junior software engineer co-op position shared his story about how he landed his position after two interviews with his current employer.
“I had two interviews. My first interview was casual and my second interview was a little more technical based. They asked me conceptual questions about Javascript and functions. Both were virtual.”
“How competitive was it to get your co-op position?” I asked him.
“It was pretty competitive. It was only one of the two interviews I got and my friend also got the same interview for the position I am at right now.
“What made you stand out the most?” I added.
“I had experience of what they were using on the job and understood most of their questions.”
What’s on the rise nowadays when it comes to searching for co-ops is the immense amount of hiring freezes co-op employers face making co-op searching limited for first-time co-op students.
A just-graduated Drexel software engineering major shared his stories of how he witnessed the co-op job market shift during all three of his co-op experiences and how there isn’t much awareness being spread among the students regarding new qualifications required to break into the tech industry.
“When you look at the many positions online, they require some level of initial experience, 1-3 years. However, there are a lot of professionals that got laid off for various reasons. The first reason is because of the pandemic. Over the course of the pandemic, the companies hired remote workers to scale up their firms because many of these firms were digital firms and they needed to scale up quickly because that was the nature of the pandemic. After people started returning to the office, the demand subsided and as a result, they had to lay off the workforce. So now you have a lot of remote workers floating around the economy who have 1-3 years of experience already.”
“How does that contribute to the co-op hiring process, regarding these changes over the last few years?” I added.
“Because you can hire young professionals now, the demand for co-ops is less. The second thing I would probably say why it’s difficult to get a co-op and even a full-time job nowadays is because the skill sets given are changing rapidly. Many of the things we currently do right now are already on the cloud. However, we’ll start to see an emergence of technologies such as AI and machine learning and not necessarily the development of it but the application of it.”
“What advice could you give younger students to gain the trust of a future or current employer to secure a spot in these companies where they could grow these required skills?” I asked.
“It depends on a lot of things. The first thing is it depends on your team dynamics if you’ve worked well with your team. I would much prefer someone who I know that has slightly subpar talent, but I can work well with them as opposed to someone with great talent but has terrible people skills. A second thing is whether they are able to adjust rapidly to the changing job conditions right now. If they are not able to do this then they are probably not able to maintain their position or any other position going forward.”
It’s a big struggle if you are a working professional struggling to keep up in a changing job market. As a computer science college student trying to break into the job market, it seems twice as hard because they are learning new skills, doing projects, and preparing for job interviews. These students have shown me, that we must find smarter ways to adjust how we prepare to take on internships and co-ops as much as the job market finds ways to make breaking into the technology industry more unpredictable and competitive.