For the past few months, all my friends have been desperately seeking summer work. I assumed that studying CS at Stanford, with its reputation and proximity to Silicon Valley, would guarantee us tech job opportunities. Unfortunately, even coming from a top institution, recruiting is still a pain and nothing is guaranteed, especially as a freshman.
Since I am a rookie at recruiting, I've made a bunch of rookie mistakes. The most important factor in my success at getting a job this summer was luck, but a close second was trying not to repeat my mistakes. There are (usually) three stages in applying in tech: resume screening, online assessment, and live interviews. I had to fail at each stage once before learning how to pass. My resume in September was three pages of insignificant information. I only got an online assessment after spending a while reading online about how to build a tech resume and going to several resume critique sessions. That first online assessment? I couldn't solve a single problem. My first live interview was just embarassing.
Most internships are looking for juniors because companies want to convert their interns to full-time employees, and freshmen know far less stuff than juniors. I can hardly believe how much I've learned in the last year. For each class, there are about five problem types that I learned how to do, ranging from understanding assembly language to writing proofs using induction. For each problem, there are at least five facts I must have learned about math or computers that could be relevant for work. Even though older people I've talked to claim to learn the most important skills while on the job, I can't help but feel that three more years of classes would make me an exponentially better employee. It's unusual for a company to be enthusiastic about younger candidates, for good reasons.
There's already a lot of advice online already about how to go about the application process. Check out this website for some of the best general advice. To that, I can only add a few anecdotes about how people around me found success in finding work in their freshman summer.
Lots of tech companies offer internships designed for freshmen. This is one of the most obvious/direct paths to an internship, so it's also one of the most competitive. Google STEP acceptance rate is definitely in the low single digits, and I doubt that other programs are much higher. Being at Stanford, all of my friends are super talented. I'm consistently impressed by their software portfolios and general intelligence. Even among them, I only know a handful that got offers from big tech first-year programs. These programs are definitely worth applying to, but they're not easier to get into just because they're targeted at freshmen.
I saw a YouTuber advertising his expensive recruiting course. He boasted about a very high success rate in finding people jobs. He said the first thing he advises his students to do is to go through their contacts and call anyone who might be able to help find a job. I'm sure anyone can do that without buying his course. This process was kind of embarrassing, but resulted in an interview for me. This was my first live technical interview, and I did very poorly. Failing this interview helped me understand that it takes a lot of devoted effort outside out class to get good at technical interviews. It's not the same skill as in-class test taking!
This is unfortunately the most common way people around me have gotten internships as freshmen. Personally, I met my recruiter at a school career fair, where I was told they would not be offering an internship program. Due to events beyond my control (luck), they changed their mind after a few weeks and invited a few people from the career fair for interviews. Learning from my earlier mistakes, I spent all my free time preparing for the interview, about ~20 hours in the week before the interview. I ended up being asked about content I had reviewed just the hour before the interview. I hope it's clear how much had to go right for me to get a job.
Many of my friends have had similar experiences. One heard back from a cold application that they thought they weren't qualified for. A recruiter reaches out to another of my friends for a full-time position, but, after a good conversation, they agree to hire him as an intern. There are clear ways to put yourself in positions to get lucky like this, i.e. go to career fairs, be active on LinkedIn, and apply to lots of jobs.
In the end, you probably have to get lucky.