Looking for an Internship: June–July 2025 Edition
In this tech winter era, the opportunities for computer science students like me to get accepted for internships are getting smaller. This can be compared to students who studied 5–10 years ago, when IT students were really in demand everywhere, they tended to get internship offers more easily. Now many companies are doing efficiency, laying off employees, and reducing their staff in IT divisions.
The search period
In June–July this year, since I am on semester break and only have my thesis left, I was also looking for an internship. Even though I have already done three internships (once as a software engineer and twice as a product manager), I feel that I still need another internship to increase my chances in the future for a full-time position.
Currently, I enjoy being a product manager intern more than a software engineer. Because I have already done two internships as a product manager intern with a total of 9 months of work, I am relatively more familiar with and understand what kind of things the product team actually works on. That’s why I only applied to product roles such as product manager or product owner intern. I mostly applied directly via LinkedIn or directly on company career websites. I also once applied through Kalibrr.
How many applications were processed?
I applied to 30 different openings. Guess, how many passed CV screening and moved to the next stage?
It's only 3. My CV was rejected in 27 openings 😮
The 3 companies that accepted me were Hangry, Tiket.com, and Kick Avenue. You could say all three are startups in the IT field, though with their own specialties: Hangry focuses on culinary startups, Tiket.com is one of the largest OTAs in Indonesia, and Kick Avenue is a marketplace for authentic branded goods.
How long did they process my applications before inviting me for interviews? Hangry processed 4 days after I submitted, Tiket took 3 weeks, and Kick Avenue 5 days.
Well, 3 out of 30 feels very small. It means the success rate of my CV being screened was only 10%. But oh well, better than nothing being processed at all, right?
Interview phase
From the three, Tiket.com and Hangry had 2 interview phases: HR and user. At Hangry, the interviews were fully in Indonesian, while Tiket’s were fully in English. Kick Avenue didn’t have an HR interview and went straight to a user interview.
Both at Hangry and Tiket, the HR questions were quite similar. They asked about my background, why I was interested in product internships, and my experiences in previous companies. If HR found it suitable, then we would proceed to the user interview. Fortunately, I passed in both of those companies!
The day came for my user interview at Hangry. This was where my knowledge was tested. There were many questions related to what I did in my previous internships, whether I made any impact in my previous companies, and also questions about how a product lifecycle is run. There was one last question where I felt I really flopped: suggest what features should be added or improved in one of Indonesia’s largest marketplaces (the orange one) 10 features in 10 minutes. Boom. I wasn’t ready for this! I even forgot my account password for that marketplace. I felt my answer was very bad and only based on my gut feeling without considering things like “what goals do you want to achieve?”, “what metrics do you want to maximize?”, etc.
The end result? As expected, no news from them after the user interview ended ☹️
Then, for Tiket.com, I was scheduled for a user interview on Friday, August 8, 2025. However, since I was sick, I rescheduled the interview to the following Monday. Apparently, they had already found a suitable intern, so I couldn’t reschedule and the user interview was canceled. I was very sad because I had planned to prepare for this interview as best as possible, but in the end it didn’t happen.
Finally, my last chance was at Kick Avenue, which went straight to the user interview. My user interview here took quite a long time, 1.5 hours. The questions were about what I did as a product management intern in previous companies, what impact I made while I was there, and my knowledge of the software lifecycle. The difference was, the role I applied for here was “technical product manager.” Therefore, in the final part of the interview, there were 2 technical tests! I was asked to create a bug ticket based on the given case. I also had to know whether it was a frontend or backend bug. The second question was similar but trickier because the backend already looked correct but the frontend had an error.
But, turns out I understood the technical tests and I felt I could answer both of them well! Finally, that same afternoon I received an offer from Kick Avenue. Hooray! 😄
My decision
I accepted the offer from Kick Avenue. First, I felt challenged by how technical the product people are here (because they mentioned the product team is indeed quite technical), and I also needed to take an internship quickly to register it for the course “Kerja Praktik”, where the deadline to fill out the study plan card was really only 1–2 weeks away. It would be risky if I declined the offer and believed I could still get another internship.
Final words
Out of 30 applications, 3 were processed, 3 reached the user interview stage, and 1 resulted in an offer. In other words, I had to face my insecurities 27 times through rejections and 2 more times during the interview stage.
There were many times I felt anxious and afraid of not getting an internship. But the point is, from all those failures, after all we only need 1 offer to erase the sadness during the internship search!
Now, I have been working at Kick Avenue for a little over a week. I will post about my experience here another time.