7. Find Your First Internship

To land your first software job, you need to present yourself as someone who can actually build software.

That might sound obvious—but most students struggle with this because they don’t fully understand what skills are expected of a junior developer, or how to show they have them.

• In Chapter 4, we broke down the day-to-day responsibilities of junior software engineers.
• In Chapter 5, we covered the technical skills needed to build production-ready applications.
• In Chapter 6, we looked at how to build projects that demonstrate those skills in action.

Now, in this chapter, we’ll focus on how to present yourself professionally, craft a strong application, and actually land that first internship or entry-level role.