The Handbook is for all CS students, regardless of class standing, to plan and prepare for their career as a CS major. The Handbook provides important information that the college offers, such as where to find Academic and Career Resources at Hunter, who your Advisors are, what requirements are needed for your CS major, and how to map out your major via the Major Requirements and Degree Maps section.
The Handbook also discusses what you as a CS major should refine and practice outside of class to be prepared for internships and full time employment. This is especially useful for Freshmen and Sophomores who want to prepare for their careers early. The Handbook discusses Building a Portfolio of Projects, CS Practice & Self-Guided Learning, Programming Competitions, Hackathons, as well as the importance of a polished resume, GitHub and LinkedIn accounts.
Having your class standing, major and grades in order are very important. We highly recommend you reach out to the appropriate Hunter staff to review your classes and any issues you are experiencing with your academics.
We have spent a lot of time collecting data from prospective employers to provide you steps that will help you be competitive for internships and full time employment at a tech company.
In order to be competitive with the many other CS graduates and bootcamp grads that are flooding the market, we highly recommend you (1) gain proficiency in 2 languages other than C++; (2) make at least 3 - 4 personal projects and host them via Github; (3) complete at least one internship; (4) review coding challenges daily or weekly for interview prep; (5) have a polished resume and LinkedIn account. Throughout the Handbook, we have provided information to accomplish these goals.
If you do not follow any of these steps, the chances you will be hired within the Tech Sphere is not very likely. Through our data collection of employers and recent grads, we have found this to be the case.
Here are some quotes from tech companies we have partnered with in relation to hiring CS graduates:
"Some basic fundamentals are important. As a graphics company linear algebra is at the core of what we do even before any programming language. We find that people who have a good grasp on fundamentals can write good code regardless of programming language. It was disappointing that most of the students couldn't describe a very basic linear algebra concept, even the student who told me he got an A+ in linear algebra."
"I look for technical projects that students do outside of their school work. Not a lot of students at Hunter have "demoable" projects, i.e. that is work that's deployed/live for people to view. Having projects on Github is OK but not many employers have time to look into the code, especially if it's in C++. It would be a good idea for students to build their personal portfolio (something that students from code bootcamp are taught to do)."
"I'm not sure if these are qualities that can be "taught", but one signal I look for is the candidate having a non-trivial personal project that they worked on outside of school."
"Biggest difference between the good and candidates was working on and shipping side projects"
"Do more personal projects; events where they hear from or talk with tech leaders/workers so they are more comfortable with it"
"Do literally any project outside of school. Very few students had an example of this."
We have organized the site based on your comfortability with CS and the topics we will cover. These are not strict categories, so some of you may be a mix of levels.
Beginner = early stages of the major (100 level classes) for students with no resume, github, LinkedIn, or personal projects.
Intermediate = students who are currently in 235, have a resume that needs editing, very little github activity, are in the early stages of personal projects, have a linked in account with little info / activity, or have no internships
Experienced = majors have completed 235 and applied for internships or had one, frequent github activity, multiple personal projects, and a polished resume and LinkedIn account
Full list of our Job Search and Interview Information
Thank you for visiting the Hunter CS Handbook. We hope you find this information helpful. Please share with your fellow CS students at Hunter.
Please make sure to subscribe to our newsletter and review our online calendar.
Hunter CUNY 2X Newsletter https://bit.ly/CUNY2XNewsletter
Hunter College CS Student Event Calendar https://teamup.com/kskdcw1236dz62mxwa
You can find a full list of all the pages on the Handbook here.....
If you have any questions or suggestions for the Handbook please contact eh1782@hunter.cuny.edu
