25 Career Tips for Computer and Information Services Students

Build something that processes real data and breaks. That’s the one thing I’d tell CS students looking for engineering jobs right now.

When I review candidates for backend and data engineering roles, the portfolio projects that stand out are the ones that show someone thought about what happens when things go wrong. A todo app with a React frontend doesn’t tell me much. But if someone took a public dataset, built a pipeline to clean and transform it, handled malformed records, added basic monitoring, and wrote up what failed during the process and how they fixed it, that tells me they can think about production systems.

You don’t need a massive project. I’ve seen strong candidates who built a simple data ingestion tool that pulled from a public API, detected when the API changed its response format, and logged the difference. That’s maybe 200 lines of code but it shows you understand that real systems deal with messy inputs and unexpected changes.

The other thing I’d add is learn to read code you didn’t write. Most of your first job will be understanding existing systems, not building new ones from scratch. Contributing to open source projects, even small bug fixes, teaches that skill faster than any class.

In the time I was studying computer and information services, the reality that I wish someone would have straight-out told me, rather than having me learn by experience, is the level of competition that exists out there. There are plenty of intelligent and able candidates who are seeking the same positions, and the fact of being good is no longer the difference-maker, but the starting point. In order to really make yourself stand out among such a field, you must be exceptional at one particular thing or another, as opposed to simply good at all things.

As a mentor to a junior developer at Bank of America, I have seen a different variation of the same problem. This time, however, the issue is not that the junior developers lack technical know-how, but rather the fact that many new graduates rely completely on AI-powered software to help them do their job, and in the process forget about learning entirely. This means that although they can create functioning pieces of code quite quickly, they simply don’t have the required knowledge when something needs fixing.

This is precisely why my advice to students now differs from the advice I would have given them even a few years back. Knowing how to code and being adept at using your frameworks is no longer sufficient. In today’s world, one must also learn how to deal with AI intentionally, i.e., learn how to ask it clear and specific prompts, rather than accept its answers without questioning them. Being adept at a language or a programming framework alone will not be sufficient to get you through a career as fast-paced as ours. The students who will really make it big are those who continue building their knowledge base beneath all their actions and use AI as a tool rather than an easy way out.

Computer and information services students should prove that another person can operate what they built. A demo on your own laptop shows coding; a handoff shows delivery.

Ship one complete user path backed by persistent data and an automated test, then give the deployed system to a classmate with no setup help. A campus room finder is enough. Watch the first point where they can’t run it, understand it, or recover from an error. Repair that point and add logging around the failure they exposed.

Practical details belong in the repository. Put the live link and setup steps at the top, explain one architecture tradeoff, and make the main test easy to run. The reviewer should be able to tell why the system is a single application, where its data lives, and how to diagnose the failure you found without asking you for a tour.

The resume entry should name the handoff failure your tester found and the recovery path you added.

Before you send a single application, run your resume through an ATS checker or simply copy-paste it from the PDF into a plain text file and read what comes out. Many CS students use two-column templates or put their contact info in a header, and the applicant tracking system reads that as scrambled text or drops it entirely, so a strong candidate never even shows up in the recruiter’s search. Then tailor the skills section to each posting using the exact terms it uses (“React”, “REST APIs”, “CI/CD”) wherever you genuinely have that experience, because recruiters search their ATS by those keywords, not by job title.

Learn how to debug before trying to learn every new technology. Junior developers fresh out of college often know how to build something when the tutorial works. However, real engineering starts when things break up. A request times out, a dependency breaks, logs contradict your assumptions or the database returns something you did not expect.

Take one project and deliberately break it. Then learn to trace the failure from the symptom back to the cause. Read logs, inspect network requests, reproduce the problem, and document the fix.

That skill transfers across languages and frameworks. The truth is that technologies will change quickly but the ability to investigate an unfamiliar failure will keep making you useful.

“Computer and Information Services majors need to use employer-friendly language when describing the technical knowledge they have developed. Employers care about technical expertise. However, they are also interested in seeing how you will apply that knowledge to resolve issues, improve current practices, and support the organization’s goals. The more clearly you show an employer how you can use your technical expertise to support their business goals, the stronger your interview will be.

Students need to provide at least two and no more than three examples of college projects or internship experiences where they demonstrated problem-solving abilities, teamwork skills, and results. When you explain the problem, the actions taken to solve it, and the results achieved, you are showing future employers how you think through problems, collaborate with others, and add value immediately. These examples can also help you turn technical skills into a clear story that employers can easily connect to the position.”

There is no denying that the job market right now is tough. I don’t envy students who are about to graduate and jump into the workforce.

Nevertheless, for many, it’s now or never, and recruiters will be looking for the best of the best. Graduates need to be prepared to put their best foot forward.

Many students change course from majoring in less technological programs to those focused exclusively on technology, so there is a surplus of grads coming out with the same or similar degrees. These students may have a slight advantage.

Recruiters are looking to fill information and computer services jobs with candidates who are well-rounded. If you started out with a major in business or marketing but switched to information systems, for instance, don’t neglect mentioning that prior coursework.

If you can paint yourself as a candidate who is skilled at more than just computer or information services, and that you can bring more to the table, it will give you a leg up over your fellow grads.

Ship something substantial before you leave school. Over the past 9 or 10 years building web sites, the most effective learning opportunity I’ve had has been creating websites for real users that discover the bugs in your tests. Add one project to the Web, maintain it and repair it as needed. Teaches debugging, security basics, and completing work. It also provides an employer with something more than a list of course names to consider.

In addition, find out how your project will perform in real use. Read the logs, how it deals with errors and what slows it down. Employers that are hiring in computer and information services are looking for individuals who have the ability to not only write, but maintain software. To be able to describe one real problem you had to solve and solved, will do much better for you in an interview, than any grade.

Computer science majors love to brag about knowing five programming languages. I’d rather see you know one industry well.

Languages go out of fashion every few years. Knowing how a business really makes and loses money stays useful for decades, and very few new grads bother to learn it.

Pick a field most people find dull, like insurance, logistics or the law, and trace how money moves through it. At Chronicle, we build software for Social Security disability law firms. Most developers have never heard of a hearing backlog, so the few who learn the term get trusted with bigger problems quickly.

In my work, I watched a developer with average coding skills become the person everyone asked first. She knew how a claim moves from application to appeal, and that knowledge beat raw speed.

Start this month. Read three trade blogs in your chosen field and message one person who works there. Most people answer a polite note, especially from a student. Then build a small project around a real problem in that field and put the result at the top of your resume.

Build one real thing that strangers use while you’re still a student. I started my studio, Ecrin Digital, in 2023 while studying computer science, and today I’m an engineering student at UTT in France, on exchange at KOREATECH in South Korea until December 2026. Shipping work for real clients and users teaches what coursework can’t fully simulate: deadlines, feedback and consequences. In August 2026, I co-launched Doodraw, a drawing app, with illustrator Elodie. I built its animation engine from scratch, about 20,000 lines of Rust, and it passed 70,000 installs in its first 8 weeks. You don’t need that scale to benefit. A small app, a website for a local business or a CTF team gives recruiters proof that you can finish things. CTFs took me to the SANS CTF European Championship 2026 finals. A degree shows you can learn. A shipped project shows you can deliver.

Be ready to explain every line of anything you hand in. I’m a developer at a small software firm in Kolkata, and I read our applicants’ take-home submissions before they reach the technical interview. Most of them now contain some AI-written code. We don’t hold that against anyone. What decides the interview is what happens when I open the candidate’s own file and ask why a function is shaped the way it is.

Some people can walk me through it. They know why they picked a map over a list, what they’d rewrite with one more day, and which part they’d never ship. Others go quiet, because the assistant made those choices and they accepted them without reading closely. The code looked the same on my screen. The interviews didn’t.

So my advice for this recruiting season is simple. Use the tools, but treat every suggestion as a first draft you’ll be quizzed on. Before you submit anything, go through your own code and write one sentence per function explaining the decision behind it. If you can’t write that sentence, you don’t understand the code yet, and a decent interviewer will find that out in under ten minutes.

My advice: don’t market yourself as “technical.” Market yourself as someone who can turn messy business rules into usable systems.

At Corpiya, we build around global expansion, legal counsel, governance, and entity management. The strongest technical people are the ones who ask: who approves this, what jurisdiction applies, what must be auditable, and what happens when the rule changes?

In cross-border M&A work, I’ve seen deals slow down because information lived in emails, spreadsheets, and local processes no one had mapped. A student who can model that complexity clearly is much more valuable than someone who only says they know Python, cloud, or AI.

For recruiting season, bring one project that shows this mindset: a system with roles, approvals, exceptions, and a clean audit trail. Employers remember candidates who can build for the real world, not just the demo.

I can answer this because I built GPTZero as a college student and I now work with engineers who use AI every day.

One piece of advice is to build one real thing and be able to explain every part of it. AI can now write working code in seconds. So a project that runs isn’t proof of much anymore. What stands out is a student who can say why they built it that way and what broke along the way. They should also be able to say what they’d change.

I built the first version of GPTZero over a winter break. People were using it so I had to fix real problems fast. I learned more from that than from any class project because I couldn’t hide behind a result that merely looked right.

Pick something small that real people will use. Ship it and fix what breaks. In interviews, talk about the mistakes. Anyone can show a clean demo. Few people can defend a decision.

Networking shifted my whole path in cloud computing. When I started, I’d message founders and product leads weekly on LinkedIn with questions about their stack. One 15-minute chat turned into an internship referral a month later. October’s a natural time to start reaching out. Skip the career fair line and just message people. Follow up with what you’ve picked up since. One real update can lead somewhere you never expected.

Here is what works: create a blog or a YouTube channel on network or cloud concepts in simple terms. Once I shared some of my old project solutions, I received inquiries from recruiters and secured interviews for positions I didn’t even expect to get. You don’t have to be a specialist just yet.

Just demonstrate your ability to teach what you know.

Learn to explain what your software does for the person on the other end of it, and practice that as deliberately as you practice the technical work.

A computer and information services degree leaves you steeped in the technical side, and that is the part an employer already assumes you have. What separates the graduates I want to hire is being able to describe a problem a real user had and how they knew their fix actually worked. I run a software company, and in early career interviews the people who stand out talk about who the feature was for before they talk about how they built it.

You can build this habit before you graduate. When you finish a project this term, write a short plain language account of who it helped and what changed for them. Look for a co-op or campus job that puts you near the people using what you write. A graduate steeped in the problem as well as the code gets trusted with real work sooner, because the hardest part of the job is the part nobody can hand you in a ticket.

Bring a debugging case study to recruiting conversations, not just a list of technologies. Show that you can trace a failure across system boundaries and explain the evidence behind your diagnosis.

For example, build a small application that sends confirmation emails from a domain you control. If a message fails authentication, trace the path from the application through the sending provider to DNS records and the recipient’s message headers. Document which check failed, what you changed, and how you confirmed the fix. Use test accounts and remove credentials and personal information before publishing anything.

Put the case study in a short README with the symptom, competing explanations, evidence, fix, and remaining limitations. Include an example of a plausible explanation you ruled out. A working demo shows what you built; a clear investigation shows how you think when the demo stops working.

During October recruiting, attach that write-up to applications and practice explaining it in two minutes. My recommendation is to make your reasoning inspectable. Tools will change, but diagnosing a problem and handing another person a reproducible explanation are skills that travel across software, cloud, and security roles.

Understand the business impact of your code, but not the code alone. In my transition from designing architecture to digital accessibility (in 2010), the most successful engineers and designers in each world were not necessarily the strongest at writing technical code; rather it was those who could explain the user harm as well as the corresponding legal or regulatory “failure mode” associated with each and every feature. An overlooked accessibility requirement becomes a lawsuit. A poorly made data decision is a regulation issue. It is important to develop an attitude where you are always thinking about who can get hurt and/or who pays if something ships with defects. That instinct compounds for a career. Pure coding skill stops being the differentiator fast.

My biggest piece of career advice for students majoring in computer and information services is to build a portfolio that shows how you troubleshoot, not just what technologies you have studied.

Employers can see your courses, certifications, and software skills on a resume. What is harder for them to judge is whether you can take an unfamiliar technical problem, narrow down the cause, and solve it without immediately guessing.

I would use college projects, internships, labs, or even a home environment to document a few real examples. That could mean configuring a small network, troubleshooting a permissions issue, setting up a virtual machine environment, recovering from a failed software deployment, improving a backup process, or securing a system that was misconfigured.

The important part is not making the project look complicated. It is showing your reasoning.

For each example, I would be prepared to explain what the original problem was, what symptoms you observed, what possibilities you ruled out, which tools you used, what ultimately fixed the issue, and how you verified that the solution worked.

That gives an employer much more information than saying you are familiar with Windows Server, Linux, networking, cloud platforms, or cybersecurity tools.

It also prepares you for technical interviews. When someone asks how you would handle a system outage or user access problem, you already have a framework for explaining your approach. You can talk through how you would gather information, check the most likely causes, protect data, document the issue, and escalate when necessary.

I would also resist the temptation to present yourself as an expert in everything. Technology changes too quickly for that to be credible, especially early in a career. I would rather hear a graduate say, “I have not worked with that exact system yet, but here is how I would begin diagnosing the problem.”

That shows judgment and adaptability.

Computer and information services is a field where credentials can help open the door, but employers ultimately need people who can keep systems working when something goes wrong.

My advice is to graduate with at least three technical problems you can explain from start to finish. A list of tools shows what you have been exposed to. A clear troubleshooting story shows how you think, and that is often much more valuable.

Honestly, show up at career fairs ready to pitch how you’d automate something the company already uses, like onboarding or scheduling. At Appear, candidates stand out when they connect their tech choices to actual business results instead of just listing specs. Build portfolio projects around real problems people have, not just cool tech.

You must stand out as an AI-native graduate to match the spirit of a time that’s increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence adoption throughout IT companies nationwide. While this doesn’t necessarily mean creating an AI-focused resume, you should emphasize your fluency in adapting to emerging technologies.

It’s also important to remember that IT recruiters are more habitually using tools that identify keywords like ‘AI’ on industry resumes, which means even mentioning your experience can make all the difference when it comes to shortlisting.

Discuss your qualifications and relevant experience, while also listing one example of how you’ve utilized AI to bring greater efficiency to whatever processes you were undertaking at the time, whether it was in an educational or vocational capacity.

At this stage, employers are looking out for clear evidence of AI fluency that can be reshaped for faster career progression. So don’t worry if you don’t have much experience; any familiarity with artificial intelligence can be worth its weight in gold when it comes to capitalizing on opportunities in the job market.

Computer and information services majors must shift their focus from writing clever, isolated code to building software that functions as a sustainable, long-term operational asset. The most significant gap in entry-level talent isn’t algorithmic knowledge; it is a fundamental disconnect regarding technical debt and business alignment. While academic prompts reward complex, customized logic, that same complexity often becomes an expensive liability for a production team to maintain over years.

In enterprise environments, clean, readable code that any team member can debug is vastly superior to hyper-optimized but convoluted scripts. The candidates who stand out during peak recruitment are those who can articulate the financial and operational implications of their technical choices. You need to demonstrate an understanding of how specific architectural decisions impact cloud hosting costs, data privacy compliance, and future scalability.

When presenting your portfolio, stop leading with a list of languages and start explaining why those tools were chosen to solve a specific problem. Show that you prioritize version control best practices, automated testing, and clear documentation. In large-scale operations, engineering success is measured by how reliably a system runs and how efficiently a distributed team can collaborate on it. By shifting your mindset from completing a one-time assignment to building software that drives sustainable business outcomes, you immediately differentiate yourself from peers who view technology through a purely theoretical lens.

My most critical piece of advice is to not let your resume, or your degree, be the most interesting thing about you. Yes, technical skills are critical. Yet, hiring managers see the same technical skills over, and over, and over again. Why are you different? What about your responses is authentically you. Rather than answering questions in a “What would I do” mentality, instead answer them in a “Why do I do the task” this way mentality. Allow an interview to see you as a human, with a real point of view, and a real perspective, don’t jsut jump to the answer, take the interviewer on the journey. Curiosity, adaptability, ability to create value, will enhance the technical answers. Lastly, have an opinion. Be a thought leader within your field. I.E. answer this question: Where is the future of Computer and IT services headed for your demographic? Any why does your unique background, position, and thought process meet that need.

Learn to read the numbers your employer runs on. I mean cost per unit, margin on a contract, the reason a project gets funded in March and killed in June.

Here’s another thing I’ve noticed.

The technical people who moved up fastest in my thirty years weren’t the best coders in the building. They were the ones who could sit in a review and say this cuts four pounds off every unit across 80,000 units a year. That sentence gets budget approved. Pure technical arguments almost never do, because the person holding the money doesn’t speak that language and won’t learn it for you.

I’d sort this out in the first month. Get hold of your employer’s annual report or the division’s budget summary, then book fifteen minutes with your manager and ask one question. “Which line on here does my team move, and by how much?” Write the answer down. Every proposal you make after that opens with the effect on that line and the detail follows underneath.

Most graduates never ask and it shows by year two. The ones who do stop being treated as a pair of hands quite quickly.

Employers are still running fall recruiting, but NACE reporting is clear that many of them have pushed the actual offers into spring and summer. So if you apply in October and hear nothing by Thanksgiving, the decision usually hasn’t been made against you. It’s been moved. The people who stay in motion through that gap are the ones still in the pile when the offers finally land.

When I hire developers, I open the repo before I read the resume. A tools list tells me what someone has been near. A deployed project with commits spread over months tells me how they work, whether they write a README a stranger can follow, whether they ship. For a computer or IS major, that deployed project is the one asset October can’t fake and December can.

So while offers are in limbo, build the thing. Pin it on LinkedIn, put the live link at the top of the resume, and use it as the reason to message alumni at a dozen companies you want rather than blasting a hundred portals. And treat the internship as the real interview, because most of the full-time pipeline runs through conversion, not through a separate spring application.