Alumni DatabaseMost schools have some sort of alumni database of people who are willing to meet with students. If you haven’t heard of something similar at your school, ask a Career Services counselor. Once you have access to this database, search for Software Engineers, and send each person a friendly email asking to meet. You can use our Email template as a guide!

Career EventsYour school likely has many career development events, webinars, meet-ups, and an online platform to find connections and job postings. Take advantage of all of these resources. Your school may also have developed relationships with specific companies, which will give you a competitive edge when applying to them.

LinkedInAnother school-based strategy is searching your school and the desired company on LinkedIn (ex. “Penn State Microsoft”) and clicking on People. This strategy is a great way to find people who aren’t in the alumni database but would still be very likely to speak with you. Before you apply to a company’s internship, do a quick search on LinkedIn and see if you can meet with one or two alums. Getting a referral will greatly increase your chances of scoring an interview with that company.

Personal ConnectionsOther ways to find people to network with include personal connections (your friends’ parents, your parents’ friends, your relatives, etc.), reaching out to people with similar interests or educational backgrounds, and cold emails/LinkedIn DMs. For cold contacts, try to find people who seem active online, and who have at least one thing in common with you. This last strategy will have a pretty low success rate, so you’ll have to send out a bunch of messages if you want to get a few responses.

Networking for a Specific CompanyIf you want to work for a particular company, you should try and network with people who work there or used to work there. These people can teach you about the company's culture and hiring processes, connect you with other people at the company, and maybe even give you a referral. These contacts could even be current students who worked there as an intern during a previous summer, professors who used to work at the company, or a career advisor who has a relationship with the company.

Even if these people don’t currently work at the company you want to work for, their networks are probably bigger and stronger than yours. If they know someone helpful, they might be willing to put you in contact with them.