Job Search

Finally after a summer of job searching, I have decided to accept an offer from a wireless networking startup based in bay area. I am very excited to get this opportunity; the kind of dream job I was looking for right after my Phd. Hoping to learn a lot, contribute a lot, make a name for myself, make money of course, and enjoy California.

Ramble on a bit about the whole experience. In total it took a little more than 3 months to finalize on a job. Much longer than the 1 to 2 months I had expected. But, then I was completely inexperienced in this regard, and had no idea that job right after PhD, fresh out of school is the most challenging task; made more difficult by the absolute necessity of the first job being the perfect and correct. A wrong career move at this time would be extremely detrimental to what I planned for my future. Other than research labs or academia, few places like to hire fresh phds. They would rather have masters with experience. Except those few jobs which require the design skills and breadth of knowledge that one acquires during PhD. And I was really looking for an industry position, an in particular a startup. Startups are really where much of the R&D takes place in computer science, definitely in computer networks. Joining a startup would therefore be right at the bleeding edge of technology. So was really happy to land up my perfect job.

During my June through August job search, I came in contact with numerous companies. Some only 1 email exchange or phone call, some one or more telephone calls and some actual site visits following telephone interviews. My interviews took me to Bay area several times, Seattle and Albany. The top-notch interviews were whole day affairs starting from early morning till late afternoon, and some even including dinner. They generally consisted of many hour-long one-to-one interviews, and an hour long talk near the beginning for R&D positions. Some one-to-ones were algorithms/coding types (for the company ones) and some were your own and related research issues (for the R&D types). It is quite challenging be unruffled for the whole day, and I felt so completely drained at the end of it. Hardest was a 2 day back-to-back Seattle/bay area trip, both of which consisted the whole day. Was dead by the end. But, got the job though :-) Met some of the sharpest people during the interview process, made innumerable contacts, and had a great view of at least part of the industry. Two of my interviews with the only company R&Ds doing sensor networks turned out to be very useful for me as well. Getting real-life examples where my dissertation could be directly applied and getting good motivating industry examples. My thesis ideas turned out to be quite appreciated as well, leading to a job offer from one of those companies, and missing another by a whisker (3 month away graduation plans playing partly the role of the spoiler). So, emerged much more confident about my thesis ideas after being peer-reviewed by the industry. One startup interview was also spent in almost 4 hours of talking just about my research stuff; and getting an offer from them really made all my dreams come true and all nightmares vanish. The one hour of job talk was really the PhD proposal stuff padded with a few more divergent projects to show the breadth of research topics. You are supposed to show both depth as well as breadth.

One really hard thing was getting questions like "got a job?" from people all around. Was really getting on my nerves, but I guess I was partly to blame by informing people around me about the status of my interviews. Oh, and another question to avoid asking a guy after 5 years is - "when are you graduating". That questions would produce lots of grating of teeth as well. :-)

So, my advice is as follows:

- Take more time to plan and survey the scene. A great and relevant cover letter is a must, so is a polished resume (possibly customized) and a good research statement (for labs as well as generally good to write one).

- Do not start looking till you are mostly done with PhD. Because this is a full-time effort - physically as well as mentally. Concentrating on anything else is difficult. Also, you want to put full effort, as you want all your offers to come bunched together.

- Most companies and startups will want you to join right away, and quite a few companies shied away as I said I am still 3 months away.

- Cultivate and use contacts. Jobs for phds come about quite a bit through word of mouth.

- The number of good PhD jobs in industry is limited. And the number of candidates are many. So, tailor your qualifications to the industry you want to join. Yes, that means brushing up those skills you hardly used during your graduate studies.

- To be suitable for industry, you need to have worked on during your graduate life, both a sound theoretical problem, as well as showed promise in prototyping real systems.

- Be prepared for the personal or HR questions. I had no idea about those and had to brush up on them in the middle of my interview cycle. Questions like "Tell me about a situation when.....".