The Job Search Process

1. The Job Search Process Deb Agarwal, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories Raquel Romano, Google Jeannette Wing, Carnegie Mellon University CRA-W Mentoring Workshop 2011

2. Finding a Job • Generic • Understanding what you want • Your application • Preparing your talk • Preparing for the interview • The big day! • After the interview • Managing offers • Academia • Government • Industry • Post-docs

3. What Do You Want? • What kind(s) of position are you looking for? • Research university? Research lab? Teaching college? Post-doc? Development? Start-up? • Where are you (and any significant other) willing to live? • West coast? East coast? International? Urban? Rural? • What type of group do you want to work with?

4. Your Application • Cover Letter • Curriculum Vitae (CV) • Degrees, research and teaching experience, jobs held, honors and awards, papers published, talks given, refereeing, other service... • Research Statement (1 page) • What is your vision for your research? • Teaching Statement (only academic) (1 page) • What is your vision for teaching? • Letters of recommendation (3-5 people) • Transcript (sometimes)

5. Tips • Look at materials and get advice from friends from previous years. • Start drafting early. Revise, revise, revise! • Ask advisor, fellow students, and other faculty members for feedback. • It is worth investing a lot of time. • Remember: Your statements are in your complete control.

6. Identify Letter Writers • With your advisor, develop a list of candidates • Familiar with your research • Respectedin the academic community • Possible sources (in addition to advisor) • Internship advisors • Members of your research community • Members of your thesis committee • Other professors at your institution • Letters are EXTREMELY important.

7. Tips • Ask letter-writers way in advance of any deadlines. It takes time to write a good letter. • You are asking them for a favor. Make sure you minimize their work effort. • When you ask, make sure they will write a positive and meaningful letter. Give them an “out.” • If they say “no,” don’t press; find someone else. • Give them a copy of your application materials and ask if they need any more information. • Give them a list of the places you are applying/deadlines . • Keep track of which places have letters and from whom; send gentle remindersif necessary. • Thank them and tell them where you end up!

8. Preparing Your Job Talk • Broad audience: Provide enough background so people outside your field can follow the talk • Identify a challenging problemwith impact • Provide enough detail to make the challenge clear • Identify your specific contributions versus collaborative ones • Innovative and effective solution • Put yours in the context of other solutions • Show you understand any weaknesses/limitations and issues with thesis approach • Future research ideas and interests

9. Tips • Iterate with your advisor: outline and talk. • Give practice talk to wide audience at your institution and incorporate feedback. • Get audience to ask questions, even weird ones, and to play “difficult” personalities. • Assume questions being asked are easiest possible,rather than most difficult. • Video your talk and (gulp!) watch it. • Practice until you are comfortable but not bored. • Bring a backup copy.

10. Tips Have multiple versions of your job talk prepared • Standard one-hour talk, leaving time for Q&A • Sometimes 1½ hours, with time for Q&A • 10-minute version (for those who missed your talk) • 2-minute elevator pitch

11. Preparing for an Interview • Do your homework – understand the organization! • The web, your advisor, research colleagues, ... • Know the research areas and accomplishments of the people you will meet; prepare questions for them. • Find answers to • What are the strengths (and weaknesses) of the organization/institution and of the group/department? • How might your research capabilities complement and integrate with the organization/department? • What role does the group/department play in the institutional structure? • Where does research funding come from?

12. The Big Day(s) • Don’t book yourself into crazy travel • Get plenty of sleep, eat healthily, and try to get in your exercise. • Bring copies of your CV and research (and teaching) statement(s) • Enjoy and have fun • Try to imagine yourself in the environment • Do you like the organization? • Do you want these people as your colleagues potentially forever? • Remember: you are interviewing them too!

13. Tips • Be enthusiastic! Show passion about something. • Interpersonal skills are important. • Do they want you as their colleague? • Don't say negative things about other institutions or people. It can come back to haunt you. • Always tell the truth • We are a small community. • Remember you are representing your advisor, your department, your university. • Consider when or whether to mention any two-body challenges. • Make sure your host tells you what to expect in follow up.

14. After the Interview • Evaluate what happened– revise your materials if necessary • Talk to your advisor, who may already be getting feedback. • Send notes thanking people you particularly enjoyed talking to • Follow up with anything you said you would do. • File for travel reimbursements promptly • Read the instructions carefully before the trip – know what is reimbursable and what receipts will be needed • Be sure to keep copies of receipts • Okay to contact them if you have an offer from another institution/organization

15. Academic Positions April 2005

16. Tips • With the help of your advisor, identify “stretch,” “eye-level,” and “safety” institutions. • Don’t apply somewhere you are 100% sure you won’t go. Certainly do not visit. • But, keep an open mind! You might be surprised what you end up liking the best. • Note due dates: November, December

17. The Selection Process • Once your application has been received, the department will decide whether to • Ask for letters • Let you know that there is a “no match” • But often you will not hear anything→ “no match” • Have your letter-writers send their letters directly • Might help sway the recruiting committee • A few applicants will be invited for an interview • Ask your faculty champion to contact people he/she knows at the places you have applied and put in a good word for you • For some positions, you can let people know that you are going to be “in the area”

18. The Academic Interview • ~2 days • The interview talk (preferably early, not at the end) • 30-minute one-on-ones • May meet faculty from more than one department (especially if research interests overlap) • Meet with department head/chair (and dean) • Meet with a small group of senior grad students • Meals • Goal: Convince them that you will add strength to their department in important areas (research, teaching and service) and will be a collegial department citizen Please see Tips for the Job Interview for more.

19. Questions You Will be Asked • What is your vision for the field? • What was the novel insight in and/or long-lasting scientific contribution from your thesis work? • What do you want to work on next and why? What would you write in a proposal? • How do you choose problems to work on? Solution approaches? • Why you are interested in this institution? • What courses would you like to teach and why? • What is your philosophy about teaching students? • Do you have questions for me? Please see Tips for the Job Interview for more.

20. Questions You Should Ask • How are decisions made in the organization? • Are professors/researchers encouraged to collaborate with each other? • How good are the graduate students? Where do they go when they finish? • How are they supported? • How are students matched with advisors? • How is interdisciplinary research viewed? • How is collaborative research viewed?

21. More Questions to Ask • What is the teaching load? • How are teaching assignments made? • How are new courses introduced into the curriculum? • How does the department relate to the rest of the university? • How will I be evaluated? • What is the tenure process? • Please see Tips for the Job Interview for more.

22. Managing Offers • Celebrate success; don't take rejection personally • Evaluate strengths/weaknesses of each offer • Negotiate! • Talk openly with your significant other • Imagine yourself in each place, how you would feel

23. Negotiating the Offer • Start date • Teaching load and 1st year teaching assignment • For your first semester, ask for a “bye”, to teach an advanced grad course, or to co-teach an undergrad course • Research start-up package • Grad student support, conference and funding agency travel funds, summer salary, equipment, lab and student space, committee service reduction, teaching-load reduction • Tenure clock issues (clock credit, clock stoppage) • Salary, benefits (medical, retirement) • Subsidized housing, moving expenses • Campus parking location/cost, child care facilities/cost • Help with obtaining an H1-B visa (if you’re non-US)

24. Decisions, Decisions • Academia vs. industry vs. government • Research university • Teaching college • Industry research • Industry development • Government research • Government service

25. What is Often Not Said Most faculty get tenure • Most departments hire expecting/hoping to award the person tenure • Hiring and mentoring of junior faculty is expensive, in time and money • A hire is a big department investment so it’s worth their while to make you successful

26. What is Often Not Said University positions provide the most flexibility in terms of future options • Difficult to move from a teaching position to an industrial position UNLESS you can show that your job skills are still current • Very difficult to move from a teaching or industrial position to a university position UNLESS you have been publishing in high-quality venues

27. Government/National Lab Positions April 2005

28. Government Lab Environment • Projects tend to be collaborative, multi-disciplinary and often large in scale • Working on science problems of national priorities (national security problems too at many labs) • Opportunities to get involved in pure research and applied research problems • Work on problems that require new research solutions • Advise graduate students through university affiliation and internships

29. Government Lab Research • Mix of soft money and block funding (depends on the lab) • Research projects need to fit with the priorities and interests of the agency • National facilities/resources (leading edge capabilities) • Encouraged to publish research papers (unless classified research)

30. Job Opportunities - Postdoc • Named post-doc positions • Prestigious and highly competitive • Come with funding typically – fair amount of freedom • Term positions (typically looking to have you stay long term) • Postdoc positions • Competitive • Term position • Work on an already funded project

31. Job Opportunities – Researcher/Scientist • Career or Term position (look at advertisement closely) • Typically join on an existing project • Opportunity to (over time) move to independent research proposals

32. Application Process • Prepare: Cover Letter, CV, and Research Statement • Positions advertised on web site throughout year (named postdocs similar timing to academic positions) • If you know someone at the lab, contact them for help getting your resume viewed • Contact hiring manager for information (e-mail)

33. Interview Process • 1-day interview • Interview talk – 1 hour • Meet with hiring manager, co-workers, a few people from other groups, and HR • May meet with hiring committee as a group

34. Be Prepared to Talk About • Experience on collaborative projects • Interest in using your expertise to help solve problems relevant at that lab • Software development skills and experience

35. Additional Notes • Typically looking for long-term employees (even when a term-position is advertised) • Postdoc salaries pre-defined so no negotiation • Joint appointments with university possible • Ask about evaluation criteria and management structure (different at each lab)

36. Industry Positions April 2005

37. Why Consider Industry? • You want to see the impact of your work in thereal world on real users withreal data • You enjoy thinking about how technical/theoretical constraints interact with commercial/practical constraints • You want to expand your skill set • designing and architecting applications and APIs • making a variety of systems work robustly together • scaling an idea to handle orders of magnitude more data in orders of magnitude less time • You like working on a team and learning from team members (including non-computer-scientists)

38. Industry Research • R&D: Who does the `D’? Lab styles vary. • Research: innovation & exploration • Prototype: build a working demo • Production: make it work in the wild, launch and celebrate • What does success look like? • Publishing papers, depending on intellectual property concerns • Publishing patents • Launching a successful product (quantified by $$ made or saved, user adoption, PR & blogosphere) • Promotion--and with it, more freedom to choose new projects, propose new ideas, lead and plan strategies • Compensation

39. Industry Research • Resources abound • Funding flows freely, but you still have to sell your ideas. • Engineering talent may be at your disposal. • If you convince enough people that your research is worthwhile, engineers will be allocated to build and scale your ideas to a real product. • Company priorities may guide what is considered worthwhile. • Often work on an existing research project before leading your own. • Limits on what you can publish: may have to settle for patents. • Promotion/reward system varies from company to company, i.e. publishing, patenting, launching.

40. Industry Research: Job Search • Similar to academic/government lab search: one day of 1:1 interviews + a job talk • The match between your research and the company’s objectives should be fairly obvious✔ • Having a personal contact with a researcher in the lab is invaluable: • Will let you know about new ventures or proposals at the company to which your research applies • Will get you through the first rounds of the company’s generic (and often opaque) application process • Will invite the right people to your talk • Demo of your results is a plus: evidence that your ideas work! • Don’t apply if you have an aversion to coding: to many, it’s considered an art, and should not be dismissed! • Akin to applying for an academic job and stating that you don’t like to write papers or give talks.

41. Industry: Software Engineering • Emphasis on making things work, rather than coming up with a clever idea no one else has thought of yet. • Challenges often involve complex interacting software, not all built in your group/department/division. • Big gains from leveraging other teams’ work; requires lots of interaction. • Many project choices and frequent movement between projects. • Lean toward sequential short-term projects vs. parallel long-term projects, though both are possible.

42. Industry: Software Engineering Concerns • Will I be abandoning my expertise? Possibly. The specialized knowledge you gained in graduate school could grow stale if you spend too many years away from it. Good news: at a company with many other PhDs, there are frequent academic talks to keep you thinking and some opportunities for publishing. • Will I just be a code monkey? A cog in the machinery? Hopefully not, if you are proactive about finding good teams and projects, which you should be. Many companies encourage people to move between teams to find the best fit.

43. Industry Search: Homework • The job posting: which requirements are necessary vs. desired/optional? Which openings are a “good fit” for your profile? • Recruiters are supposed to help with this, though there is lots of variability in their helpfulness. • How long has the position been open? How much turnover in the department/group? Who has been recently hired? • Gauge growth and change in this part of the company. • What is the company/department/team culture? How hierarchical or flat is it? How much freedom do people have to choose and move between projects? • Talk to people from several teams. You will get different answers. • Research jobs: What is the funding model (central, customer-funded, both)? What is expected/valued from researchers?

44. Software Engineering: Application Process • (Possibly) Contacted by a recruiter who wants to look for job openings that fit your background and interests • Not necessarily the recruiter you end up working with later when you apply for a specific opening. • Apply on-line • Convert your CV into a resume! Have your web page up to date. • Include your references’ names and contact info. • Drop your resume and cover letter into a black hole and wait. • Internal referral system • An acquaintance/classmate/former colleague submits your name at the same time that you apply. • May be asked to provide feedback about your expertise & quality of work if you worked closely together. • Even if only an acquaintance, may smooth the path, expedite feedback, fix any glitches along the way. • Phone screen (conducted by a software engineer) • 30 minutes: may get to discuss your thesis work, but at least half taken by technical questions: algorithms, design, coding • On-site interview • Full day of back-to-back 1-on-1 technical interviews

45. Software Engineering:Technical Interviews • Interview Topics • Algorithms and data structures: time/space efficiency and trade-offs • Designing and architecting systems • Coding: correctness, facility, idioms, testing, debugging • Product and industry topics (less likely for recent graduates) • (Ideally!) No puzzle questions, but you never know • Go back and study all of your fundamentals! Read book chapters, watch course lectures, and practice many sample problems without the help of an IDE/compiler/debugger. • Interview Format • Multipart questions that get increasingly more difficult and constrained (especially if you answer the first parts with ease) • Phone screens: may write code in shared on-line document • On-site interviews: whiteboard solutions • So practice working problems on a blank paper, doc, or whiteboard! • Dedicated thesis-discussion interview that resembles a mini-defense (your interviewer probably has read 1-2 of your papers and has a PhD in your area or a related area)

46. Software Engineering:Technical Interviews • Interviewer needs to see how you approach problem-solving. Think aloud. Ask questions. • Problems will be in-depth. Some might be purposely ambiguous. Your questions and verbal reasoning demonstrate how you think about complex problems. • The “best” answer would be nice but is not strictly necessary.

47. Software Engineering:Technical Interviews It’s not just about getting the right answer. What else you might do: • Clarify the question • Construct an example or two (easy, hard) • State and clarify assumptions: expected result, memory and performance constraints, function signature • If stuck, quickly present a brute-force solution; then refine and optimize. Ask interviewer when/if to provide code. • Test examples; check edge cases. • Iterate on your solution and clean up as you go. • Compare solutions. • State your assumptions and reasoning. • Mention various approaches and alternatives.

48. Industry Job Offer: Compensation • Base Salary • Expect to share information about competing offers • Salary growth probable once on board • Additional Compensation • Stock options and units • Retirement plans and matching funds • Incentive bonuses • Medical insurance • Other perks • Ask questions! Both of the recruiter and other trusted friends who have negotiated offers. • Spreadsheet mapping out total compensation under different conditions, e.g. stock prices, bonus %, raise %

49. Post-Docs • See http://cra.org/postdocs/ for current community discussion on this topic. Hiring of new computer science PhDs from U.S. and Canadian universities, as a 3-year rolling average 1998-2009

50. Why Do a Post-Doc? • Enhance your CV • Publications, quality of host institution or faculty mentor • Chance to switch areas or switch directions, e.g., do more theory or do more experimentation • Opportunity to do focused, undistracted research • Sometimes opportunity to teach, without expectations • Stay in the academic (i.e., research) pipeline • Computing Innovation (CI) Fellows: funded by NSF, started in 2009, implemented by CRA • Opportunity to work in government or industry and then go back to academia