After reading through the responses to JonConley's resume, I figured it would be a good idea to post mine as well. I am a freshman at Purdue, and I plan on searching for an internship at a game studio soon.

When do you guys think I should start sending my resume and portfolio? Also, what should I include in my portfolio? I assume I would just include excerpts from my code along with visual representations of the results. Finally, do you guys have any tips for searching for an internship? I figured it would be a good idea to start looking early on in college.

Thanks!
Scott Wilkewitz

[Resume taken down.]

1. After reading through the responses to JonConley's resume, I figured it would be a good idea to post mine as well.
2. I am a freshman at Purdue, and I plan on searching for an internship at a game studio soon.
3. When do you guys think I should start sending my resume and portfolio?
4. Also, what should I include in my portfolio? I assume I would just include excerpts from my code along with visual representations of the results.
5. Finally, do you guys have any tips for searching for an internship?
6. I figured it would be a good idea to start looking early on in college.

1. Sure. Where is it?
2. You might be a little early in your schooling, but you can always try for it.
3. When should you start looking for a job? As soon as you want. They are looking for qualified applicants, and if your resume and other information look good enough a company will consider you.
4. Include quality work that shows (1) you can do the job well, and (2) you will fit in. Part of that includes showing drive and passion for quality and for making games. Generally it is best to not include student projects where you were learning because by their nature they show you didn't understand the concepts. However, as an intern, a certain amount of that is certainly fine.
5. A game company will not relocate you. You must get in contact with a studio that is close to you. Try http://gamedevmap.com/ if you need to.
6. Sure, you can look for a job. However, under-preparedness is one of many things that will get an application ignored. Prove that you are prepared for the job.

Sorry about that, my resume is up now. Anyway, that is understandable. When you say student projects, do you mean projects specifically related to classwork, or just any learning projects?

Overall it looks reasonable for an intern.

Add a line stating that you are looking for an intern programming position. It goes after your address and before education. That lets HR stuff it into the right pile immediately.

Lists like "Technical Skills: C++, Java, C#, .... " are almost useless to employers. State what you actually did with them and call out the tools and technologies. You already did that in the other sections, so this is redundant information.

If you have held a regular job before, include that as work experience. Even if it isn't directly related to programming it shows that you know how to hold a real job. Before you graduate it is good to include your high school jobs of working at a cash register or bagging groceries; after graduation and holding a professional job for a while you can drop them as they are not related to the bigger career history.



Cut the bible study line, replacing it with "camp activities". It isn't necessarily bad, but religion is one of several topics best left unstated:

You should generally avoid anything related to discrimination laws (birthplace, race, religion, gender, marital/children status, health issues, disability, age, linguistic characteristics) unless it has direct relevance. A few employers have policies to reject applications that include them and send a generic reply asking the applicant to resubmit the application without the information. Adding it to your application opens the door to discrimination lawsuits and companies don't like that.

Thank you for the advice! I'll go ahead and make those changes right now. When you say it looks reasonable, do you mean that my experience appears to be what is expected of intern programmers?

When you say it looks reasonable, do you mean that my experience appears to be what is expected of intern programmers?

Expectations vary wildly. It is not out of line with what is normal, and doesn't seem particularly better or worse than others.

My expectation of interns is extremely low. Based on experience it is a bad idea to put interns on any task that is critical, and while their work may be good managers should be prepared to rework everything they touched. I try to think of internships as a gift to the wider community that a company is willing to invest in training a new batch of people, and much less as an investment in the project they work on.