Getting hired

Ask for a referral before you apply. Use the rule of 20. After about 20 applications with zero interviews, pause and reevaluate your resume, the channel, and the roles you target, then keep going. It is a rule of thumb from experience, not a measured cutoff. Talk to recruiters in person at career fairs, and apply within two weeks of a posting going up. These rules hold for a first internship and for a first full-time role.

Pick the page for where you are:

• The networking page covers who to ask, the 20-minute informational interview, and the referral request.
• The job market page covers what the entry-level market looks like now and what to do differently because of it.
• The how to interview page covers the interview process and how to prepare for it.
• The first internship page covers starting with no experience, the internship calendar, and what to do if a summer falls through.
• The first full-time role page covers senior-year recruiting, return offers, new-grad programs, and offers.

Get a referral first

A referral is when someone who works at the company puts your name forward for a specific job. Get one before you apply whenever you can. In Ashby's report on 38 million applications from 2021 to 2024 (opens in a new tab), 40 percent of referred candidates got an interview. Only 3 percent of people who applied on their own did.

Ask people who know you or your work:

• Alumni of your school, especially ones you met at a talk, a fair, or a club event.
• Classmates and friends from your year or the years above you who interned or now work there.
• People from your design team, club, or lab, including the grad students and staff you worked with.
• Professors and lab technicians who know engineers in industry.
• Coworkers and managers from past jobs, even jobs outside engineering.
• Family friends and neighbors who work in the field.

Find them in a few places:

• On LinkedIn, open your school's page and use the alumni tab (opens in a new tab). Search for the company name, then look for your major.
• Ask your school's career office whether it runs an alumni mentoring list or a networking event.
• Look at your club's or team's past members. Many list where they work now.
• Ask a professor who they know at the company.

If you have never talked with an alumnus, do not open with a referral request. Ask for 20 minutes to hear about their work. Ask about the referral once they know what you have built.

When you ask, make it easy to say yes. Name the job, give the link or job ID, attach your resume, and give the person an easy way out. Copy this and fill in the brackets.

Hi [Name],

We [met at the career fair / worked together on the CubeSat team / took [course] together]. I am applying for the [Job title] role at [Company], job ID [12345]: [link to the posting].

I think it fits because I [built X with Y and measured Z]. My resume is attached.

Would you be willing to refer me for this role? If you are not comfortable with that, or do not know my work well enough, that is completely fine. Thanks for reading either way.

Alex Doe
[University], Expected Spring 2027

Ask how they want you to apply, then apply that way. Some companies give employees a referral link. An application through that link credits the employee as the source (opens in a new tab). At other companies, the employee submits your name and you get an email to finish the application. Either way, finish your part right away, or within a day or two.

Do not apply first and ask for a referral afterward. A referral that arrives after your application may never get linked to it, and SAP SuccessFactors, depending on how the employer configures it, blocks a referral for a candidate who has already applied to that requisition (opens in a new tab).

If nobody replies:

1. Send one short follow-up after about a week. People miss messages.
2. Ask a second person at the same company. Do not send the same request to five people at once.
3. If the posting is about to close, apply on your own. Applying early still matters.
4. Keep the people who said yes. Send a thank-you note, and tell them how it turned out.

When online applications go quiet

After about 20 applications with zero interviews, pause and reevaluate the resume, the channel, and the roles you target, then keep going. That rule is eeprep's, not a study's. The students below sent far more than 20, and interviews were still scarce.

One student sent about 500 applications and got 2 interviews (opens in a new tab). Both seemed fine, then both went quiet. Their projects were a home security system on AVR microcontrollers, ESP32 boards talking to a Raspberry Pi, and a PCB with 3D-printed wire channels. They were 12 days from their final year with zero internships.

An EE graduate reported 200 or more rejections (opens in a new tab). While they waited, they borrowed TIA Portal (opens in a new tab), simulated factories, and learned EPLAN (opens in a new tab).

A parent wrote (opens in a new tab) that their junior, with a 3.5 GPA, applied to many Tesla and Optimus internships and was never contacted.

A student at a more prestigious school (opens in a new tab) had projects and experience and still could not get an internship. The poster, a friend, said the student had also padded the resume. The padding produced nothing.

Tools that apply for you

Do not let a tool send applications in your name. The best documented case is a software engineer who used LazyApply to send about 5,000 applications and got about 20 interviews (opens in a new tab), a hit rate near half a percent, and about as many interviews as they had landed from several hundred applications sent by hand. Their interviews at Apple and the White House came through existing connections.

Employers can see the volume. Greenhouse's CEO, Daniel Chait, told Fortune in May 2025 (opens in a new tab) that candidates auto-applying to hundreds of jobs with AI had made the labor market extremely broken, and that Greenhouse now asks candidates to attend final interviews in person. Applications grew four times faster than openings in the first half of 2024, by Workday's count (opens in a new tab). Your tailored application sits in that pile either way. A bot adds to the pile without adding to your odds.

The tools also fail without telling you. LoopCV, which sells one, lists the ways its own kind of product goes wrong (opens in a new tab). The list has duplicate applications to the same job, poor-fit roles, companies you meant to avoid, ghost listings (reposted or inactive jobs), and more volume than you intended. All of it goes out under your name. One referral from a person on the team beats all of it. The networking page has how to get one, and the AI use page has where a tool does help.

Cold outreach and career fairs

A person gets you past the pile of resumes. One commenter got no interviews from online applications unless they had already met the company at a career fair (opens in a new tab). The calls came while the reps were still on campus. Practice the conversation with those recruiters, because the company pays them to evaluate you.

Write to a professor before you send more applications. The top comment on that thread says many professors have industry connections and can refer you directly. Alumni, classmates, and family friends are the other people to write to. Bring one finished product you can show.

Do not email a stranger at a company and ask for a referral. One commenter called that message begging (opens in a new tab). They said a referral is for someone you already know through shared work. A hiring manager on the same thread said a new-graduate referral usually does little unless that person is very credible. The top comment there called an in-person career fair the most likely way in. Georgia Tech's career center (opens in a new tab) puts referrals at the end of a relationship, after informational interviews and follow-ups.

A referral can still end in silence. One parent referred their child (opens in a new tab), a master's graduate from UT Austin, and the referral got no interview. The company designs chips for AI graphics processors. It hires interns in Canada for one year, then gives return offers. That parent had not seen a new hire in the US.

These GPA cutoffs are one engineer's rule of thumb, not a measured cutoff. List a GPA of 3.50 or higher. From 3.0 to 3.49, list it when the job posts a minimum you meet, and otherwise leave it off unless someone asks. Below 3.0, leave it off. Some employers screen applications by GPA, so the conversation has to happen where a person can hear you. If a posting's GPA minimum is above Alex's [X.XX], use the fair. One student writing from another country was told to aim for a GPA of 3 (opens in a new tab) by professors, teaching assistants, and alumni. The rest of the GPA rule is on the resume page.

Before the fair, write four lines on a card:

1. The rep's name. The fair helped only after a real conversation with that person.
2. The one build you will show, so an alumnus can picture a finished product.
3. How to apply on the company website. One student skipped Indeed (opens in a new tab) and Handshake (opens in a new tab), sent about 40 applications through company sites, and got the internship from the fourth interview.
4. When to follow up. Do it while the reps are still on campus, which is when the interview calls came. Ask each recruiter when they plan to call students (opens in a new tab).

Send the note below to a professor, or to an alumnus you have met.

Professor [Name],

I want a [summer internship / full-time role after graduation]. Can you refer me to someone you know who does this work?

The build I can walk through is my CubeSat power board.

Alex Doe [University] Expected Spring 2027

Where to look

Apply early. Princeton's career center advises applying within two weeks of a job being posted (opens in a new tab). That holds even when the posting stays open for a month. Greenhouse says most recruiters review applications in the order they arrive (opens in a new tab).

Check these three places at least once a week:

1. The career pages of the companies you want most.
2. One daily list for your level. The recruiting calendar section on the first internship page and the section on where new-grad roles are posted on the first full-time role page name them.
3. Your school's career fair calendar.

The application loop

The application loop

Three steps, repeated after each batch. One, ask for a referral. Two, apply within two weeks of the posting. Three, after about 20 applications with no interviews, pause and reevaluate the resume, the channel, and the targeting, then return to step one.

1. 1

   Ask for a referral

   Alumni, professors, classmates, past coworkers. Apply the way your referrer says.

2. 2

   Apply within two weeks

   Send the application soon after the posting goes up.

3. 3

   About 20 applications, zero interviews?

   Reevaluate the resume, the channel, and the roles you target, then keep going. Talk to a professor or meet recruiters at a career fair.

Then return to step 1.

After about 20 quiet applications, reevaluate, then keep going. Sources: Ashby's referral report (opens in a new tab), Princeton's recruiting timelines (opens in a new tab), and a thread on talking to professors (opens in a new tab).