Finding companies to apply to
Lists of hiring companies
You can often find lists online of companies hiring for summer internships. Internships at other times of the year can be trickier, but you can always email companies that do summer internships and ask if they'll hire at other times of the year.
- InternCompass (internship reviews and links to application pages)
- Intern Supply (links you directly to the application page of a lot of companies)
- Research in the US
- Indeed.com (job board)
- Breakout List (hot new tech companies)
- WayUp (internships)
- Hacker News (for the latest monthly list, search for "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (<month> <year>)". For example, "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2017)".)
- Mattermark
If you have other good resources, please submit a pull request. It's greatly appreciated :D
Join Facebook groups (and mailing lists, slack channels, whatever is out there) that have job postings.
- Hackathon Hackers Internships
- Hackathon Hackers Internships/Co-ops
- Bay Area Jobs Network
- etc... you should also check out intern groups relevant to your school! they probably exist
Google it
Information about available opportunities is scattered throughout the Internet and moves around a lot. Sometimes, just searching for "hiring interns" (adding a few more specific terms) and see what shows up! This works pretty well too.
The more specific the query, the more likely you can find something useful. Try different combinations of queries that can include some of: - What you're looking for. It can be "tech company internships", "hiring programming intern", etc. Since not all companies have internship positions advertised, you may want to just search for "tech company" and look around their website for someone to ask about internships (usually a recruiter, sometimes a generic careers@<company>.com, or even the CEO/founder at smaller companies) - The specific industry you are looking for. For example, "biotech company", "gaming studio", "app development shop", "data analytics provider", etc. - A specific city. Beyond the Bay Area, there are many smaller tech hubs in the US and Canada. You can search for internships in <your city>, <a big city near you>, New York, Seattle, Boston, Portland, Austin, Pittsburg, Boulder, Washington DC, Waterloo, Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal. Outside of North America, tech hubs include London, Dublin, Barcelona, Berlin, Amsterdam, Singapore, Taipei, Hong Kong, and probably a lot more that I don't know. Internships can be a great way to travel.
Your friends
Ask your friends where they've worked and what companies they'd recommend and how to apply to there. I bet they'd be happy to tell you about their experience and help you through the application process!
Your peers
You can also ask advice from people in your classes or that go to your school that you don't know! Be mindful that they might not have time to help you out, but my opinion is that it doesn't hurt to ask as long as you're okay with the possibility that they don't have the time/energy/interest to reply. When that happens, it's usually not personal. You probably just got unlucky and asked at a time when they were really busy.
It's worth gathering information about the job market and job opportunities on an ongoing basis. When you meet other students with internship experience (especially upper-year ones) on an average day, you can ask them about their time at their company. This way, you might learn about companies that you never knew existed, or get insight into the recruiting process. Just don't make it the first thing you ask them, that's a little too obnoxious.