She landed internships at Google and Square. Here’s how she got there.

Photo credit: Rakina Amni.

For Rakina Zata Amni, a computer science student from Indonesia, it’s a dream come true.

She’s interning in the research and machine intelligence department at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View.

“I can’t really talk a lot about what I do here,” she tells me. Interns sign a nondisclosure agreement. “My team is working on something that is important for Google’s natural language processing.”

It’s already her second time at a Silicon Valley company, though she isn’t even done with university yet.

She started out like any other student: Mostly clueless.

The year prior, she did a three-month internship at Square, assigned to work on a recommendation engine for a food delivery startup recently acquired by the payments company.

Soaking up all the cool Silicon Valley stuff – multiple healthy food options on campus, office outings by boat, foam sword fights – is one thing. More importantly, Rakina says, the stints at tech companies in the Valley made her aware that she has a knack for artificial intelligence, specifically machine learning.

Life at the Googleplex. Photo credit: Rakina Amni.

She hopes she can work in the US full time one day, but now she needs to wrap up her studies at the University of Indonesia. She’s looking for opportunities with local startups to keep herself busy in her final year.

Rakina sounds extremely focused, but says she started out like any other student: “mostly clueless.”

Determination and clever planning got her ahead. Here’s how she did it.

Get over initial setbacks

Rakina knew she wanted to work at a Silicon Valley company ever since she was in high school, but unlike other teens she acted on the idea instead of harboring it as some secret fantasy.

Resume-primping

Ask for help

Put in the hours

Go broad

Build on your experience

Keep learning, inside and outside of the company