If you don’t want to read the whole story, I have made a quote summarizing my story using ChatGPT:

“Through the highs and lows of a job search, Liberty Mutual’s TechStart Program became my beacon of opportunity. A victorious technical interview, coupled with a serendipitous call, paved the way for an exhilarating offer to intern in Summer 2024.”

– Angela Cui [ChatGPT]

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Liberty Mutual TechStart Program was one of the first internships I applied to out of the 150 applications. I applied because a friend who interned there last summer told me how great her experience was. Despite knowing I wanted to apply, I didn’t apply until mid-September since I didn’t come across the application opening until then.

The months September-November were very rough for me. I would receive 3-5 rejections every week and I couldn’t pass any online coding assessments. I did pass one coding assessment, despite that, I didn’t hear back from that company. This made me quite discouraged, I thought to myself, “If I didn’t hear back from a company even after passing their coding assessment, what are the chances I’ll ever hear any positive news from anyone?”

Towards the end of November, I started getting phone calls for phone screens and interviews. In total, I only interviewed with 3 companies. Liberty Mutual, Juniper Networks, and NBCUniversal. As you can see, they’re all of very different industries (I literally applied to as many places I could).

NBCUniversal’s interview was the only interview I did for a non-Software Engineering position. However, my interview went extremely well. I spoke with the VP of Supply Chain and he wanted to speak again with me for a second round. Despite the positive feedback, I was not able to move on to the next round…

I finally heard back from Liberty Mutual! After 3 months of complete silence, I was excited to hear from them!

After this, I did a phone screen with Liberty Mutual and Juniper Networks during finals week. I didn’t do well with Juniper Networks’ phone screen which was the one I did first. With that experience, I knew I had to try harder for Liberty Mutual. I wrote out extensive notes and a script to practice for the phone screen. It was short and sweet, however, unlike previous phone screens, it felt different, and it was.

I received an invite for the technical interview within 24 hours of my phone screen. That’s when I knew, this is probably meant to be. Why else would they rush to send me over for the technical interview? I was stressed about the technical interview, but I knew that I just needed to prove that I can be a communicative problem solver based off the technical interview tips from Liberty’s website.

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I was actually on vacation during my technical interview in Vegas. I planned to be home that day initially, but my family decided to extend our stay in Vegas instead of risking us being on the road during my technical interview time.

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I was nervous. I didn’t have technical interview experience, but I knew that the CodePath technical interview course I took that Summer would finally come into good use. I practiced CodeSignal for a week prior to the interview and used my brother to practice talking while coding.

Once the interview started, I felt comfortable. I was still nervous, but the interviewers made me feel as comfortable as I could. They seemed interested and asked follow-up questions. In a blink, the hour had already passed and I was asking them questions on why they love Liberty Mutual. They also gave me hope that they would see me in office during the Summer, but because of my previous experience with false hope, I didn’t want to raise my expectations too high. I was told that I would hear back within two weeks if I was to hear back.

A week later, on January 2nd, I was at IKEA with my mom and my brother. I checked my phone and saw that I had just missed a call from my recruiter, but I saw the contents of the voicemail and felt good about whatever was to come my way.

“… we would love to extend an offer…”

I tried as hard as I could to hide my emotions in public. I didn’t want to look like a crazy person jumping up and down hearing the great news, but I was, internally. I was pacing back and forth towards the front of the store to hide my excitement and to be honest, I don’t even remember the rest of the information my recruiter told me at that time.

I went home, read the offer letter through and emailed my recruiter back about some questions. After getting that clarified, I signed the offer and joined Liberty Mutual’s Tech Start Program as an intern for Summer 2024.