FIRST PRINCIPLES

More and more companies seek senior level skills in entry-level roles.
Learning is commoditized. Coveted is community and real-human feedback.
Job security is like running a business. One needs sales, eng., marketing roles.

MOTIVATION:

Many are passionate about software engineering because of the ability to build and innovate, solving problems and creating communities globally. The space is also in high demand and offers strong career prospects and financial opportunities. As such, we’ve developed our fellowship, allowing college students passionate about the space to refine their skills, build connections, and get practical experience coding, building, and generating revenue.

REQUIREMENTS:

Applicants are required to be proficient in at least one programming language and able to allocate 20 hours a week to the fellowship. We anticipate high demand for the limited seats available and want to ensure selected fellows are fully present and maximize the benefits of the program.

WHAT

Headstarter Summer Fellow. This is a 7-week software engineering fellowship. The program will consist of building 5 AI projects, 5 weekend hackathons, 1 final project with 1000+ users, interview prep, resume reviews and feedback from real software engineers.

WHO

We prioritize passion and interest in the space. The program is open to candidates ranging from from freshman year of high school to a graduate student who needs more experience and technical skills on their resume. We are targeting anyone who has been discouraged by the opaque application process for a summer internship and feels the lack of experience will inhibit their ability to be competitive for a full time job. We designed this program to level the playing field and help train the next generation of engineers.

WHY

Education is just one line on your resume. This fellowship is designed to help land most interviews. It will boost every area of your resume: experience, skills, projects and activities. Since you are building hands-on projects, you will have good points to talk about in interviews, the skills-gap from school to real-world will be smaller and the feedback and ideas you get from real software engineers will fastrack your career.

WHEN

The fellowship will kick off Monday July 22. It will be 7 weeks an end on Sunday, September 8th. The commitment is 20 hours a week. Applications are due by July 12.

HOW

Our pedagogy: Build. Measure. Learn. In that order.

Each week’s project is a higher difficulty than before. Projects will have a 5-day deadline (due Friday) where you will have to submit a 2-min demo of your code and bugs you ran into. If you do not submit by the deadline, you cannot enter the hackathon and will not move on to the next project. Each week there will also be requirements to upload a resume, personal brand links, blog posts or social media coding content and get 70% on 1 data structures and algorithm interview with our AI instructor trained on 400 software engineers.

Each week you will see your peer’s projects, see software engineers giving feedback to a few projects and be asked to give feedback to your peers' projects. Top 30 teams in the hackathon will demo to software engineers and each Thursday we will host online events featuring software engineers sharing their day-to-day life and challenges.

Last two weeks will be focused on building your own project with the goal of gaining 1000 user accounts created or building to $1000 revenue. You will be trained to develop a product mindset (something school neglects), get good at marketing and selling. Our reasoning is if you are great at selling your product you will be great at selling yourself to get a high paying job.

The best projects will be heavily marketed to our super network of 400 software engineers and startup founders get special attention by our team till they get hired. Everyone else will take a 20-minute interview and their information will be presented to our partner companies if there is ever a fit introductions will be made. Partner companies range from F500 enterprises to top-tier startups.

FAQ

Is the program async?
A: Yes. You can do the required work on your own time but will have to complete projects by deadlines. There will be IRL meet ups in certain cities, zoom events featuring a panel of software engineers on Thursday nights and for any feedback by a real software engineer ie hackathon demo or final project demos will require sync meets. Lastly, you will have to make teams and ship projects together so you need to meet team members based on when you guys decide to. Software engineering is the ultimate team sport.

Sponsored by Intel and several AI companies. For any questions please do not hesitate to reach out to contact@theheadstarter.com

Headstarter

Software Engineering Fellow

Remotepart-timeUnpaid fellowship (previous graduates went on to make $150K+)