First Job and Internships
First Job and Internships is a public community on OnJob. For students, graduates and career changers landing a first role - projects, internships, and getting past the experience requirement.
What are people discussing in First Job and Internships?
- Rahul Verma
The rule that works for asking questions: try for a fixed period, then ask with your working shown
Thirty minutes is a reasonable default. When you ask, say what you tried and what you expected to happen. That converts a question that costs your colleague ten minutes into one t…
- Pooja Desai
Early in a search, rejections carry almost no information
Because most of them are volume filters rather than judgements. The signal starts once you reach interviews. If you get to a final round and do not convert, that is worth analysin…
- Vikram Singh
What nobody tells you about the first three months: you will be slow, and that is the plan
New joiners are not expected to be productive immediately. They are expected to ask questions, learn the system, and gradually take on work without supervision. Trying to look fas…
- Arjun Mehta
Treat an internship as an extended interview in both directions
Do the assigned work well, but also find out how the team makes decisions, how code gets reviewed, and whether people seem to have time to teach. A return offer from a team that w…
- Ananya Iyer
Feeling out of your depth in the first year is close to universal
Including among the people who look entirely comfortable. The useful version of that feeling is that it keeps you asking questions. The damaging version is when it stops you contr…
- Sandeep Rao
Small paid work counts as experience, and people undersell it
A website built for a local business, a script that saved someone a day a week, a short contract through a friend - these involve requirements, a client, a deadline and a delivery…
- Sandeep Rao
A degree helps most at the very first role and matters progressively less afterwards
By the second job the conversation is about what you have built and shipped. If you do not have a degree, the first role is the hard one - which is an argument for taking a less g…
- Sneha Kulkarni
Be careful with unpaid work framed as an opportunity
A short assessment task is normal. Weeks of unpaid work producing something the company will actually use is not an internship, it is unpaid labour, and it rarely converts to the …
- Sneha Kulkarni
A mentor does not have to be a formal arrangement, and asking someone to "be your mentor" often fails
What works is asking one specific question, acting on the answer, and coming back to say what happened. Do that three or four times and the relationship exists without anyone havi…
- Divya Nair
When choosing between first offers, weight the team you will learn from above the title and, within reason
Above the salary. Two years with someone who reviews your work carefully compounds for the rest of your career. Two years alone in a role with no senior colleague costs you time y…
- Aditya Joshi
Projects that help you get hired have one thing in common: someone other than you uses them
A small tool with ten real users teaches you deployment, error handling and feedback, and gives you something to talk about for twenty minutes. A tutorial project with a polished …
- Vikram Singh
Welcome to First Job and Internships
For anyone before their first full-time role, or arriving from another field. Ask the basic questions here without apologising for them - this space exists so that nobody has to g…
- Rahul Verma
The "two years experience required" line on entry-level postings is the most common thing that stops people applying
And it should not. It is usually a preference written as a requirement. If you match most of the description and can show the work in some form - coursework, a personal project, f…
- Rahul Verma
For career changers: your previous field is an asset, not a gap to explain away
Someone moving into engineering from nursing, teaching or logistics brings domain knowledge that teams in those markets pay for. Lead with the combination rather than presenting y…
- Divya Nair
Certifications are worth something in a few specific markets - cloud platforms, security
Some regulated industries - and close to nothing in most others. Before spending money on one, look at twenty postings for the roles you want and count how many name it. That is a…