How to get experience if you don't have experience
Solving the chicken-or-the-egg problem, once and for all
Let’s imagine that in a land far away, a random student at a random school thinks the following thought:
“I’m applying for my first internship/job, but I don’t have any experience. The applicants I’m competing with already have things on their resumes, and I already feel behind. I need a job to get experience, but I can’t get a job without already having experience. What do I do?”
Likely, you didn’t have to imagine this scenario, because you yourself have thought some derivative of this yourself quite recently. It’s a common problem — how does one get experience if you have no experience? This serves as the ultimate modern version of the classic chicken-or-the-egg problem.
In this day and age, having a degree and taking college classes may not be enough to secure a good job. Despite studying hard and getting good grades, many students apply to countless jobs with no avail, getting tons of rejections with no interviews or offers (making you extremely demoralized).
For all practical purposes, there are three main ways to get experience without having experience. They are:
Projects (personal, academic, and club-related)
Startups
Networking (a lot)
Let’s start with the first one!
Note: I HIGHLY recommend having some sort of internship during college as it makes you significantly more employable after you graduate. To learn more about internships, check out the article here.
Projects
Projects are a great way to start putting things on your resume since they show that you can be creative, get something done, and work on a team (if it’s a team project). If you’re struggling to find things to put on your resume, personal projects are a great way to start.
If you’re not sure where to get started, just find something you think is interesting and make something from it. Some examples are creating a game, building an app or website, or even analyzing a free dataset you found online (free AI tools, like ChatGPT and Perplexity, can help you get started in the right direction). Some classes also require their students to complete projects (CS classes I’ve taken required large data analysis projects and website creation), so take advantage of it if you find yourself in that position. Professors often have their own research projects and labs, so getting involved there is an option, too.
As long as you learn something from the project, you can easily present that growth and your results on your resume!
If you’re looking for a resume template or formatting guide, I recommend checking out the article here.
Lastly, joining different clubs can be a great way to get projects on your resume. Consulting, data science, and CS clubs usually do projects where they build or create solutions for different clients and companies. After a quarter of training from the upperclassmen in the club, these clubs will then put you on a project right away to start learning and gaining experience.
On my resume, for example, I have the following few bullet points from leading a few projects in my consulting club:
Led a 10-week consulting project to create growth strategies that increased a startup carpooling service’s user base.
Managed a 5-person cross-functional team while leading weekly client meetings and driving deliverable development.
Created a developer marketing strategy and implementation timeline for a startup’s SaaS and API products.
If you’re looking for a guide on how to join one of these business clubs, I recommend checking out the article here.
Startups
Startups are basically baby companies that are just starting off.
Usually, startups have a lot of opportunities for students, especially around marketing. These roles have a lot of different titles, but they’re often called campus ambassadors, marketing/social media interns, or something similar. These roles may or may not be paid, but the roles are great ways to get some experience on the resume. There’s also the tremendous side benefit that working at a startup is usually a bunch of fun!
UCLA has a huge startup culture, and there are always ways to get involved if you’re interested (some startup is bound to be hiring at any given time). At UCLA, Startup UCLA and Bruin Entrepreneurs are great places to start looking for these startup jobs (especially Startup UCLA’s newsletter!). These kinds of startups are great because a lot of them are just looking for warm bodies to help them out. If you happen to be a warm body, you’re all set!
During my first two years at UCLA, I did three different internships for three different startups — two were marketing-related and the other was a product management role. I got one internship after finding a business card advertising the internship in my dorm room lounge, another through the Startup UCLA newsletter, and the product management one by word-of-mouth from a girl in my consulting club.
Networking
The last option is to network like crazy to get a job.
This can look like a lot of different things, but it mainly means attending lots of events, messaging a lot of people online (LinkedIn, etc.), and doing what you can to meet with interesting people who may be hiring. Once you build a connection with someone, you can politely ask if they know of any opportunities for you to get started. It won’t always work, but when it does, it works tremendously!
Besides building your professional network, knowing a lot of interesting people can lead to a ton of interesting opportunities (especially from startups). Focus on meeting interesting people, surround yourself with other interesting and ambitious people, and opportunities will arise from unexpected places.
And so we made it. Hooray!
Best of luck in getting that first experience, and see y’all soon!
Best,
Dennis :)
P.S. I definitely think the egg came first 🐣