2026 swe intern + new grad job searching has changed

So this is one of the most competitive computer science software engineering intern and new grad cycles in recent history. I'm talking in the last five to ten years. And it has brought out something profoundly evil in some people. Sabotage, intense competition, people incorrectly saying what questions are being asked in interviews, misleading people on their timelines. But it's also brought out the best in the computer science community as well. The biggest thing that's changed in 2025, besides the amount of people applying to internships and relative to the number that are available out there, is how people recruit for these jobs. Previously, you'd get a pretty big advantage if you had attended a target university, had a brand name on your resume. Just so few internship and new grad positions relative to the number that are studying computer science right now. And that you, these applications are being filled up faster than ever. So what's really come to change that I've noticed personally is that companies are intentionally recruiting through like recruiting events for Data Bricks had something called Brick Fest. Uh, the big banks like Capital One and others, uh, like Wells Fargo, I believe had like Changemakers and and other events. All these companies are hosting recruiting events. And a lot of these recruiting events are both virtual and in person. And while companies might send invites to students who had specific backgrounds, a lot of them are willing to accept people who just know the existence of these events, not just people who were originally invited. End of the day, a company is to hire qualified people. Competent people aren't always picked up on during the sourcing process. So what I've personally seen is that my Instagram and TikTok community that I've built over the last three and a half years has been sending me tons of information about these recruiting events, about OA's, about interview processes, about job links the second they open that they open. And we've become, we break this information faster than anybody else before we have news about recruiting events, information, links faster sometimes than it feels like LinkedIn or a handshake or any like job board that you might use. And this is all because of the good that still exists in our community. Because even though extremely competitive, seem to be are people who are collaborative, who are sharing this information, their time to just bettering themselves. So that if they do get the opportunity to interview, they're smart enough to pass. In my opinion, these people will completely beat out all the gatekeepers, the people who felt entitled to getting specific jobs because of the school or the past internships that they had. And I'm going to do my part as an influencer with the platform that these collaborative people win and the gatekeepers lose. So if you believe in this mission, follow my TikTok and follow my Instagram. End of the day, you don't really have a choice. We have pretty much become a core piece of recruiting infrastructure for early career tech recruiting. And luckily, it's the highway. We're gonna make sure the collaborative and we're gonna make sure the lone wolves don't. Good luck out there, whoever you are.