Walsh University senior Shruti Gupta knew exactly what she wanted from her internship experience, and she wasn’t afraid to go after it. With a double major in Computer Science Programming and Mathematics, Shruti loves programming and coding, and wanted to gain experience in the software engineering field. She set her sights on big tech companies like Amazon, Meta (formerly Facebook) and Eventbrite – and scored interviews with all three. Ultimately, Shruti accepted an internship with Eventbrite, an event management and ticketing website.
“When I enter the job market after graduation, I knew I wanted to get into a bigger company, and they look for previous experience,” Shruti explained. “I was hoping to work on an actual team of software engineers to see how they assign and manage projects. I got exactly that at Eventbrite.”
In June 2022, Shruti left North Canton and headed to Nashville, Tennessee, where she spent 10 weeks as an intern for Eventbrite’s event infrastructure team. When Shruti arrived, the team was already in the midst of a huge project. After a few weeks of onboarding and shadowing software engineers, Shruti was ready to dig in and help. Although her mentor wanted her to just observe and learn from the rest of the team, Shruti wanted to stretch her goals. She offered to take one part of the project and tackle it on her own.
“My mentor believed in me and let me go with it. I finally felt like, instead of an intern, I was a software engineer on the team,” Shruti said. “I felt nervous because I was working on something that would actually go into production. Because the project was so huge, I did a lot of self-study and self-research in the evenings. I didn’t have an option to mess it up.”
Thankfully, Shruti was part of a supportive team. In addition to her internship mentor, she also had a manager, internship buddy and other team members who would willingly give a few hours out of their day to help her. They created a space where she felt safe to make mistakes and they reminded her they were all in the same place once.
“I loved this experience and now I’m pretty sure I want to work as a software engineer on a team like this one,” Shruti said.
Her manager at Eventbrite said she would love to have her come back after graduation, but Shruti is keeping her options open.
From beginning to end, Shruti’s internship experience is a lesson on the power of persistence. In late November, she decided to pursue software engineering internships with big companies like Amazon, Meta and Eventbrite.
Amazon accepted her application and she passed the first two rounds of interviews. Meanwhile, she successfully completed the interview phases at Meta before the company enacted a hiring freeze.
After applying for the Eventbrite role, Shruti found the company’s internship recruiter on LinkedIn and emailed him. They built a rapport, and the recruiter scheduled a telephone screening. Just two weeks later, Shruti received an invitation to interview with Eventbrite. After an online technical interview to showcase her coding skills, Shruti progressed to the final round of the process—two more technical interviews as well as a behavioral interview with the Director of Engineering.
So what advice does Shruti have for students pursuing the perfect internship?
“Apply to all kinds of companies—you never know! I never thought I would have the chance to interview with companies like Amazon or Meta,” she said. “Create an active LinkedIn profile, send messages to connections, spruce up your resume, prepare accordingly for the interview, and start the process early!”
