How to get an internship in tech with no experience: A Comprehensive Guide

Securing your first tech internship is hard, especially in this job market. Here's everything you need to know to get on your feet.

1. Self Evaluation

You need to find out where exactly you are. You might still need time to be ready to apply to large tech companies, and you also may not know enough to contribute anything fruitful.

Take some time, ideally with a pen and paper, and assess your interests, goals, and strengths. Find out what you like working on and what you're good at. What drives you to code anyway? Honestly, I recommend just watching some YouTube videos and looking through some Medium articles. 

2. Learning Skills: Leveraging Online Resources

After all of that, you should know what you want to start learning. Here are a bunch of pretty solid resources that I'veused.

Free resources to learn frontend development:

1. https://www.freecodecamp.org/

2. https://youtu.be/zJSY8tbf_ys

3. https://youtu.be/nu_pCVPKzTk

4. https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialDevTips

5. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/

6. https://css-tricks.com/

7. https://dev.to/

Free resources to learn backend development:

1. https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-backend-development/

2. https://youtu.be/Oe421EPjeBE

3. https://youtu.be/nu_pCVPKzTk

4. https://youtu.be/8mAITcNt710

Free resources to learn Product Design (UI UX):

1. https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/google-ux-design

2. https://www.youtube.com/@Figma

3. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAwxTw4SYaPlTr1MmjkAZXVv8Su2CfY7D

There are infinite resources two Google searches away.

3. Building a Project Portfolio: Showcasing Your Abilities

Take your interests and skills. Plug them into ChatGPT to help you generate ideas. Put in a couple dozen hours of work and you’ll have something marketable to employers.

4. Identifying Internship Opportunities: Company Research

Try leveraging your network. Find companies that interest you. Startups are great. Apply thoroughly and broadly. It's a numbers game at the end of the day.

Landing an internship in tech right now is pretty hard, but there are a lot of opportunities, especially in certain niches. If you put the work in and can prove your competence you'll be fine.

Make sure you stay tuned to EarlyBird for many, many more opportunities.