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How an international UNC student landed an AI summer internship after changing her major

by with No Comment Xpandfy

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Vivienne Hnin, a junior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who will be interning at AI-native startup Utilyst this summer. Her employment and identity have been verified by Business Insider. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I came to Chapel Hill in 2023 as an international student enrolled in pre-med.

My country, Burma, was on the travel ban list last year, so I couldn’t go home and had to find a summer job. As a biology major, I didn’t have a lot of options for summer internships. That made me reevaluate my major because I felt medical school might be difficult as an international student with all the policy changes.

So, I started exploring other options. Part of the reason I decided to pivot into computer science is because of AI. In the past, people who went into computer science had been coding since they were very young. They knew the fundamentals coming in.

I didn’t have robotics or computer science classes growing up. With AI, you can learn at a much faster pace. UNC was also really accommodating and helped me switch majors and explore my interests without locking me into a major that I chose freshman year.

It was hard to adapt and get an internship this cycle because I started late, so I tried a bunch of tactics. Here’s what worked:

1. I started building projects and posting about them.

Over winter break, I pivoted and started building projects with AI.

These are essentially assignments you make yourself. A lot of juniors, especially those without internships secured, have personal projects. I learned that it’s important to have a good front-end that’s accessible because recruiters who review these projects aren’t always technical.

I made videos and posted about them on LinkedIn. That garnered some traction. Some recent alumna also started reaching out to me about coffee chats.

I decided to cater all of my projects toward one or more major coding languages so hiring managers would see that I was proficient in all the major coding languages. I also launched the projects, which showed that I was able to make it a full-stack project.

2. I attended hackathons.

I started going to hackathons because they were a great way to learn new technologies and work with people.

I also practiced a lot of technical concepts through self-studying.

3. I networked a lot.

I got LinkedIn Premium for a month and started cold DMing people. I had a lot of LinkedIn connections, and a lot of important people were either my first or my second connections at the time, so I was able to message them. I think it’s really important to keep upping your connection count on LinkedIn. If you’re a student looking for a job, I recommend getting Premium for a month.

I searched for founders from UNC. I got ignored a lot, as one would expect when they beg for an internship in a LinkedIn DM. However, I received responses from two alumni, and both led to offers.

One of the professors I reached out to actually got me an AI engineering internship at Utilyst, which I’ll be working at this summer and fall.

4. I used Handshake and career fairs.

There are a lot of scam job postings. I found Handshake more reliable because it’s affiliated with schools. Career fairs are also great because if you can convince the recruiter that you’re worth their time, you may be able to skip the line and get an interview.

5. I didn’t listen to the noise.

One thing that computer science and pre-med majors have in common is that they want to be the one person crossing the finish line. There’s a lot of sabotage, and people are very business-minded.

When you go on Reddit, you’re going to see a lot of bad advice. For example, I was told to focus only on my grades, and that personal projects are useless because people can now build with AI, so they won’t help you stand out.

I have never been asked about my GPA, transcript, or even my courses. I have been asked primarily about my projects. Also, most of the interviews I’ve done actually accommodate the use of AI. Whether it’s in real life or online, sometimes the advice is not accurate.

People also make the industry seem more competitive than it is. Part of my decision to enter CS was out of spite. I was talking with one of my fellow international students who’s a CS major, and he told me I switched too late and I wouldn’t be able to get an internship. That made me want to start applying.




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I landed a job by cold emailing the CEO. Nothing else worked for me.

by with No Comment Xpandfy

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Cathy Xie, a 25-year-old marketing professional based in Toronto. It’s been edited for length and clarity.

I remember opening my laptop about a month into my job hunt, seeing yet another automated rejection, and feeling this kind of collapsing desperation. I knew I needed to do something different in my approach if I wanted to stand out in the job market.

I tried three new job-finding strategies, but I didn’t get hired until I sent an email directly to a CEO with the subject line “My landlord inspired this email.”

Job seekers should be thinking less about their résumé and cover letters, and more about how they can get a potential employer’s attention.

I mass-applied to jobs for a month

In 2024, I founded a startup aimed at helping students and new grads with unconventional backgrounds pivot into tech and navigate the job market. Unfortunately, we had to shut down about a year and a half later due to changes in the market. It’s a little ironic that the tech job market is what put me back on the job hunt.

After mass applying to roles across marketing, product, and growth, largely targeting tech and AI companies, I felt drained. I was also spending so much time doom-scrolling on TikTok, watching video after video of young Gen Z job seekers talking about their frustrations with the job market.

Job searching was always in the back of my mind, and I knew it was time to try a different approach.

Referrals and niche startup boards only helped me so much

The first route I tried was referrals, but those were not a huge success.

My next approach was scouring niche startup boards, subscribing to free newsletters that posted about startups hiring, and even following LinkedIn creators who report on startups that had just raised. Then I’d apply directly through the company’s website and try to email someone on the team who would likely be my manager for that position. Though I didn’t end up with a job from that approach, it was still a great way to network.

My last approach, cold emailing a founder, ultimately landed me my new role. I’d been following this founder’s journey on LinkedIn for a while because I was passionate about his startup’s mission to address the housing crisis in major cities. He posted that he was hiring a marketing manager and included a link to apply. I thought to myself, “I am not applying the traditional way again.”

I had just come across a social media post from someone about how cold emailing helped them achieve so many of their life goals, and how rejection was redirection. It made me think maybe I should just email the founder directly. I had nothing to lose.

The founder responded to my email

I know, as a founder, you get thousands of emails, so I needed to make sure my email was one he had to open.

It was also important to me to make my email as personal as possible because I think it’s a lost art. Especially with AI, we’ve become overly formal with writing. My subject line was “My landlord inspired this email” because I thought it was funny and might grab his attention.

In the body, I introduced myself, described my past roles and how they prepared me for this job, and wrote about my passion for and interest in the startup itself. I tried to keep it personable and a little funny. I kept it around 150 words, so it was short and sweet.

He responded just over a week later by emailing me back and messaging me on LinkedIn to set up an intro call with him and the CMO. After two more interviews, including an intro to a case study and a case study presentation, I was offered the role of marketing manager.

The job has been great so far, and my team is amazing.

Here’s my advice for job seekers

The first two questions a lot of people ask themselves when applying to a job are “How should I write my résumé?” and “How should I write my cover letter?”

However, I think the question you should ask yourself instead is, “How can I get the attention of this person?” Once you ask yourself how you can get in front of a person, you open up so many ways to approach this job hunt, rather than just doing the traditional cold application.

With this wave of AI, it’s so easy not to put in effort with job applications and just mass apply. But I think what comes with getting people’s attention is putting in the effort.

You can spend a few hours cold applying and maybe get one or two automated emails, or you can spend those hours doing a couple of very personalized outreaches. It will take effort, but I think it’s important to put that effort in if you want to stand out in today’s job market.

Do you have a story to share about finding a job with an unconventional method? If so, please reach out to the editor, Manseen Logan, at mlogan@businessinsider.com.




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Jacob Zinkula

Nvidia rejected this international student. Then he bounced back and landed his dream job there.

by with No Comment Xpandfy

As Sylendran Arunagiri considered moving from India to the US to pursue a master’s degree, some friends and mentors advised him to delay his move. They warned that the US tech job market had become too challenging.

Arunagiri’s goal was to move to the US in late 2023, begin a master’s program in product management at Carnegie Mellon University, and land a Big Tech internship for the summer of 2024. He hoped this would be a stepping stone toward landing an AI-related role, ideally at Nvidia, his “dream company” because of its central role in the AI technologies he’d long wanted to work on.

However, there were several things working against him. For one, the US tech hiring landscape was already creating headaches for job seekers. Openings had plummeted from highs reached a year earlier, and industry layoffs were increasing competition for available roles.

Additionally, Arunagiri had grown accustomed to the job market in India, where he earned a bachelor’s degree and an MBA from top institutions that he said relied on structured campus placement programs to funnel many students directly into jobs. But from what he’d heard, the US was very different. Job fairs were often more like networking events than recruiting opportunities.

“You’re completely on your own,” said the 30-year-old, who now lives in San Jose.

Arunagiri is among the many job seekers who have struggled to navigate a US hiring landscape that’s become more challenging in recent years. Amid economic uncertainty, the early effects of generative AI adoption, and a broader push to streamline operations, US businesses are now hiring at one of the slowest rates since 2013.

Still, some people have managed to break through in a challenging market. Arunagiri shared how he pursued his goal of working at Nvidia — a company he described as his dream employer — and offered his top advice for other job seekers.

Striking out on Nvidia

Many of the tech companies Arunagiri was targeting had conducted summer internship interviews the previous fall, so he began applying before moving to the US. After sending out many applications, he landed an interview with Nvidia in November 2023.

Arunagiri said the interview process went so well that he stopped applying to other internships. But after moving to the US and completing his final interview in February, he learned that he wouldn’t be getting the role — which left him scrambling to find another internship.

“I had to start from scratch, but by then many of the applications had dried out,” he said

Arunagiri was able to land an AI product manager internship based in India at the tech company Informatica. However, that summer, he found it difficult to stop thinking about what went wrong during his interview process with Nvidia — and began setting his sights on eventually landing a full-time role with the company.

A second chance at Nvidia

Upon reflection, Arunagiri suspected that his final Nvidia interview may have doomed him. He said he was lower energy than usual because he was feeling sick that day, and that he’d been hesitant to postpone it out of fear that the opportunity would be filled in the meantime. In hindsight, he said that decision was likely a mistake.

“I came off as a dull candidate, but I’m usually energetic and conversational,” he said. “I should have probably postponed it to a day that I was feeling better.”

Arunagiri decided to reach out to an HR professional from Nvidia to get insight into where he fell short, and they agreed to jump on a call with him. While they didn’t provide specific insights into his candidacy, he said they recommended he try to connect with people at Nvidia in current roles, including hiring managers and interns, to get insight into the kinds of projects they were working on and how he could better align his profile.

He eventually connected with about five Nvidia interns, who he said provided valuable insights. Those conversations helped shape the personal AI-related projects he began pursuing and sharing on LinkedIn in hopes of standing out.

After the summer, Arunagiri dove back into the job search, eager to land a role before he graduated in December 2024. He knew that if he didn’t land a job within 90 days after graduation, his F-1 visa restrictions would force him to return to India.

In September 2024, he submitted a cold application for a technical product marketing role in agentic AI at Nvidia —a role he described as his “dream AI role” at his dream company. He was asked to interview starting in October, and around the same time, he was also invited to interview for a more junior product management role at Microsoft.

Read more about people who’ve found themselves at a corporate crossroads

Advice for other job seekers

In December, with his graduation looming later that month, Arunagiri received offers from Nvidia and Microsoft within days of each other. Given that Nvidia was his dream employer, the role checked a lot of his boxes, and the pay was higher than Microsoft’s, he said the decision was fairly easy — and he accepted Nvidia’s offer. He said that so far, working at Nvidia has been “everything that I’ve dreamed of.”

Arunagiri believes that his LinkedIn presence helped him stand out. During the interview process, he said, the hiring manager told him that he’d reviewed his LinkedIn profile and noticed the projects he’d been working on, including small experiments with new generative AI tools and models he’d shared publicly.

He has a few pieces of advice for job seekers. First, he said, time management is key, particularly because applying for jobs and connecting with people can be time-consuming. Second, he said, never compare your job search journey to anyone else’s, since a variety of factors can influence how it plays out.

Rather than quietly applying and networking, he recommends sharing tangible projects publicly — such as posting about AI tools you’ve explored and linking to projects on LinkedIn or a personal website — so hiring managers can see your work.

“You need to find something that sets you apart from others,” he said.




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