Today marks the end of my first semester as a PhD student. Over the last several months, I have talked to many interesting people about academic career opportunities. The large majority of what I have heard is that there are less and less professor positions in Computer Science available (especially at Canadian institutions), and that if I wanted to get one eventually, I would have to do something that really made me stand out among the crowd.

So with this in mind, as a fairly new PhD student, what advice would you give me now to have the best chance for good opportunities down the road? I would love to hear responses from people currently in academic positions (especially if they’re involved with hiring), or those who are currently or will soon be seeking an academic appointment.

As always, you can leave feedback in the comments below, or respond to me via Twitter (@jamiestarke), and I update this article with all the feedback I receive.

Update:
Alright, I had some good feedback. No, I’m not set that I HAVE to get an academic position. I really enjoy research because I get to work on interesting problems, and I enjoy finding patterns, but I would probably be happy with Any position where I got to work on interesting problems, and pursue my own interests.

I am currently a Teaching Assistant for SENG 301 (Analysis and Design of Large Scale Systems), a second or third year Computer Science course, depending on the student.

This is the third time that I have been involved with this course, and it seems that each year around this time I get questions from my students about jobs, internships, etc. I can only offer them up my experience, which unfortunately is limited, because I found that I couldn’t do an internship until I had 3 courses left, due to department suggestions on what courses that you should have before doing an internship, and the fact that I hadn’t started planning to do one until the beginning of my 3rd year. I can also share my experiences about the application process, as I have applied to both Google and Microsoft.

What I really lack however is the first hand knowledge that is gained from either starting an entry level software development position, a software development internship, or having worked first had with someone along these lines. This is where I’d like to get feedback from my community. What are your experiences with internships? Would you recommend them to a 2-3 year computer science student? If so, why? If not, why not? What are the benefits or drawbacks from your point of view?

Updates
This is where I will put feedback that is given to me though other sources

• One benefit is that a lot of places offer their interns jobs afterwards. (Thanks T.H., forgot about that)