What is InternLink

InternLink is a non-profit built to enable students to get hands-on experience working on real-world projects mentored by industry professionals, especially during COVID-19. InternLink is modeled after Google Summer of Code (GSoC). But instead of only projects proposed from open-source organizations, individual mentors can also host projects, allowing a wider reach of students. Mentors will identify the project, and it will be published on InternLink. Students will then be able to apply for up to 3 projects, and mentors will select among the applicants as the project mentees. 

 

Timeline

Project Submission Begins

25/06/2020

Student Applications Open

15/07/2020

Project Application Close

20/07/2020

Decisions Send to Students

25/07/2020

Student Decisions Due

6/1/2020

Waitlisted Student Decisions Due

6/4/2020

All Projects Begin

6/8/2020

Mentors and organizations submit their projects.

Students engage with mentors, ask questions, and apply for individual projects.

Mentors begin their selection from all student applications for their specific projects.

Students will be notified of which projects they were accepted for and whether they were waitlisted.

Accepted students will confirm with their project of choice by the end of the day, and waitlist decisions will be sent out.

Students on the waitlist will confirm with their project of choice by the end of the day.

All project groups begin each projects!

FAQs

Is InternLink a recruiting program?

No. InternLink is a platform to connect students with the mentors working in the industry to gain valuable experience from working on the projects.



Is InternLink an internship program?

No, InternLink is a platform that connects individual student with mentors.



Are organizations or individual mentors required to use the code produced by students?

No. While we hope that all the code that comes out of InternLink projects will find a happy home, we don’t require organizations to use the students' code.



Where will InternLink project take place?

All InternLink projects will take place online.



What can I do to help spread the word about InternLink?

You can ask your friends to participate as the mentors/mentoring organizations. You can help us connect with the IT organizations which might be interested in participating with InternLink. If you have any feedback, suggestion, interested in working with us or would like to collaborate with us, please drop an email at contact@internlink.org



Can I participate in InternLink as both a mentor and a student?

No. We want to make sure that each project and student receives sufficient attention. Please choose whether to participate as a mentor or a student.



What if I have more questions?

We are happy to answer them. Feel free to send us an email at connectinternlink@gmail.com!



Do I get paid for participating?

No. As of today, students or mentors will not be paid stipends by InternLink. We are working on onboarding organizations who will pay the stipends for their respective projects. We will keep everyone posted on any new updates.



Will I get an internship certificate from the mentor I am working with or from the mentor’s organization?

We will certainly send some completion graphic for you to share on social media! However, any official certification will come from the discretion of the organization you are working with.



Will I be under any circumstances eligible for Pre Placements Offer (PPO) from the InternLink, project organisation or mentor’s organization?

InternLink, mentors, or their organization are not required to consider students for PPO. Considering the student for the any possible employment opportunity post project completion is entirely at the mentor's or organization’s discretion.



Will I be given a system to work on during the InternLink period?

No, students are required to use their own systems (laptop or a desktop).



Where can I apply for InternLink?

You can apply for projects from MyProfile section.



What programming language(s) should I know to participate in InternLink?

The programming language you need to know depends on the project you are interested in working with. You should be familiar with the programming language(s) required for a project you are applying for.



As a student, can I apply for more than one project?

Yes, each student can apply up to 3 projects. However, student can only participate in one project no matter how many projects you got accepted in.



As a student, what if my friends and I want to work togethr on a single project?

We encourage you to find a mentor to propose your project on InternLink. Even if this person will not be deeply involved, he or she should serve the role of keeping all project participants accountable throughout the duration of the project.



What are the eligibility requirements for participation?

You must currently be a full or part-time student (or have been accepted and committed to the fall term) at an accredited university as of the 1st May 2020.



How much time does InternLink participation take?

Time commitment varies from project to project and from individual mentee's personal decision. Remember, we only get out what we put in.



 
 

Mentors Guide

How do I identify projects?

Primary goal here is to provide learning avenues for students. So any idea which you think would give ample opportunity for a college student to learn would qualify as a project. Here are few of the ideas to identify a project

■ Building developer friendly tools and utilities.

■ Projects related to your work which you think will be apt for a beginner. You can abstract out a part of your work which can be worked on independently.

■ Projects you did as a part of college course work. You can get student to reimplement it.


■ Implementing a Research paper. It can also be a research paper you or someone else has already implemented.

■ Guiding a student in implementing the challenges previously hosted on platforms like Kaggle, DrivenData, Topcoder, HackerEarth, etc

■ Some fun idea that you have always wanted to work on but could not find time for. Student can work along with you on such ideas.

■ Low-hanging fruits kind of projects. Projects which you think are too trivial and require minimal familiarity with the codebase and basic technical knowledge. They are relatively short, with clear goals but still can provide great learning for beginners.

■ Infrastructure and automation kind of projects. These projects are the code that your organisation uses to get its development work done; for example, projects that improve the automation of releases, regression tests and automated builds. This is a category in which a student can be really helpful, doing work that the development team has been putting off while they focus on core development.

How do I define a project?

Broadly one can use these points to identify the projects -

■ Identify the possible topics based on your work, some open source project you work on, your past experience or some good to have functionality which you think will provide a good learning opportunity for students. Please check the what are the types of projects section below this for more details.

■ Try to categorise the topics into easy (no prior experience required), medium (some prior experience on related topics or prior unrelated development experience), hard (requires domain specific knowledge) and then see if it fits in the 1.5 to 2.5 months timeframe.

■ Identify the specifics from the topic which student would work on. It can be a set of small tasks, a new feature, a re-architecture, something to be built from scratch, or some exploration work. Have a look at the Types of projects below for more details.

■ Please submit project proposals for phase-1 by 10th May

Things to avoid

■ Projects which require you to share your organisations repositories, code or business logic with the students

■ Projects which have a hard dependencies on external resources such as cloud compute/storage, paid licenses, etc. For projects which require CPU/GPU resources, AWS Educate and Google for Education can be used
https://edu.google.com/programs/?modal_active=none
https://aws.amazon.com/education/awseducate/

Do I have to pay accepted students or give them any merchandise on successful completion?

Neither you, your organisation or InternLink is obliged to remunerate students

Do I have to give systems to accepted students to work on?

No. Students are supposed to use their own systems to work on the projects.

How do I communicate with the students?

■ You can use any medium of communication of your choice to connect with the student. Few of the options - Email, Call/Mobile Chat, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Amazon Chime, IRC, Zoom, BlueJeans, Hangout, etc

Some tips for to establish better communication -

■ Try to fix time of the day for communication with students

■ Build guidelines for students before contacting you. Example - Look at the logs, Add debugging lines, Look up online. Repeat these steps at least a couple of times

Good practices while submitting proposal -

■ Link to the resources, videos which will be useful in understanding the project.

■ Be clear about the project ideas. Be sure to write a few sentences describing what you need accomplished and not just an overall theoretical version of what you might want.

■ Try to give an overview of how the projects the student will be working on generally gets used in the industry.

■ Try to give a big picture of the project domain, how it is linked to organization as a whole

■ Publish some FAQs related to project

What details should the project include?

Please refer to mentor project submission guide.

What should be the duration of the project?

Ideally, the project should take somewhere in the range of 1.5 months to 3 months to complete.

 

Mentor Project Proposal Guide

Submit following details in the project submission form -

■ A project title

■ Detailed description of the project. What does it do, what are the expected outcomes, relevance of the project, etc

■ Programming language/s to be used

■ Min Skills requirement - e.g.
▸ Student should he well versed in Project Programming language Python, Java, etc
▸ Familiarity with some framework - Git. ,etc

■ Specific points that you would like the students to mention in the application

■ What is the duration project? (Assuming a student with a little prior experience will be working on this)

■ How many student applications will you accept?

■ Categories project as beginner, moderate or expert

■ Link to Resources related to project

 

Student Application Guide

Submit your application in pdf format. Your application should contain,

■ Project title

■ Describe why you should be selected for this project (maximum 5 lines)

■ Your resume

■ You can also add links to your GitHub profile, project pages etc

■ Answer any question asked by the mentors for the project you are applying

Have questions or feedback? Interested in working with us?  Email us at connectinternlink@gmail.com