author | Ludovico translator | Crescent
produced | CSDN (ID: CSDNnews)
I am a newly graduated European graduate student, and I will share my personal experience of finding a job through this article.
Some people may say that there are many opportunities in the United States, but are they the same in other countries? The high-tech market is in short supply of technical personnel, but is it easy to find a job as an entry-level programmer in ?
My answer is yes. However, the competition we face is indeed much fiercer, but we have to find a way to get an interview opportunity, and we also need certain relevant experience.
My background
My college major is applied mathematics , but in my sophomore year, I found that I really like writing code. As a result, I experienced an unusual internship, which was also the most meaningful thing I did in college. Through internships, I found my favorite area of development. I'm glad that while studying hard to get good grades, I also spent a lot of energy exploring my career path.
During this period, I participated in two activities: "Julia Contribution Season" and "Google Summer of Code", engaged in some open source software work, and wrote a library: Surrogates.jl (https://github.com/ SciML/Surrogates.jl).
I am very grateful to the Julia community. I have grown tremendously as an open source developer and learned advanced design knowledge of software development techniques and libraries used by many researchers around the world.
At that time, I was still hesitating whether to challenge for a Ph.D. after graduating with a master’s degree. To keep my resolve strong, I decided to continue using Julia while working with the Alan Turing Institute on some open research questions. This experience made me realize that an academic environment was not for me. This is another valuable experience!
During that time, my girlfriend was studying in Gothenburg, Sweden, so I decided to move there and interned at Volvo Cars while continuing to complete my master's degree in computer vision .
Shortly after, I moved to Petit-Saint-Genipouil, France, where I worked at CERN for 6 months and wrote a lot of Python code. In this way, while studying hard, I slowly explored my interests and considered my career development, and unknowingly entered the stage of job hunting and interviews.
Preparing for interviews
I am targeting machine learning software engineers and applied scientists. I also applied for a data science position but didn't hear back. I feel like there is a lot of competition for entry-level positions in data science, maybe because I'm just a low-profile candidate.
To prepare for the interview, I practiced two skills: programming and machine learning knowledge.
In terms of programming, I made the following preparations:
- 75 random questions; the course Grokking the coding interview on
- education.io;
- brushed up on many questions (about 200 questions) on leetcode and binarysearch.
I realized that if I wanted to keep up with the market and pursue a high salary, I might need to interview again in a few years, so I took notes on every important programming question (https://hollow-wood-560. notion.site/Coding-questions-FAANG-prep-9cdf280e5f30425fa188cbbaa6d1998c). If you want to know which questions are worth studying, you can also refer to my notes.
In terms of machine learning, I made the following preparations:
- read "Introduction to statistical learning";
- Grokking's machine learning interview course;
- "Data Science Prep" Volumes I, II, and III.
Interview
I started applying for jobs around September 2021. I applied for many entry-level software engineer positions at the same time. The reason is simple. If I'm lucky, I can get multiple Offer, which will give me room for negotiation.
I summarized the companies I applied to and the final results. Two-thirds of them rejected me directly.
Although among the above companies, only a few are engaged in professional artificial intelligence research, I still applied to these companies for the following reasons: these large companies more or less have their own machine learning team, and my expertise That's it, so I think eventually I'll find a team that I'm happy with.
Rejected
I did really poorly on online tests and most interviews rejected me quickly because I get bored easily. Helsing rejected me during the interview process. They asked me to complete a machine learning problem at home, and my performance was indeed not good, so I was rejected unexpectedly.
Offer
In order to relax myself during the interview, I will listen to some music and put on my favorite clothes to cheer myself up.
Additionally, I treat interviews as a little game of "solve a small algorithmic problem with another engineer" without thinking about the risks. I may not be able to guarantee the best answer every time, but I will try to express my thinking process.
Eventually, I received the following offers.
Meta
The first offer I received was from Meta. The interview process included:
- Technical interview
- Virtual on-site
- Technical interview 1
- Technical interview 2
- Behavioral assessment
Meta’s interview was very difficult, which I did not expect. I had to solve 15 to 20 problems in 45 minutes, but I did pretty well. For Meta interview preparation, I recommend focusing on reviewing some common questions.
One week after the interview, I received the offer! Unfortunately, the salary package for new graduates is non-negotiable, but fortunately, the conditions offered by Meta are quite good.
already had an offer in hand, which made me very relaxed during the subsequent interview.
UBS
A few days later, I received another offer from UBS. The interview at UBS includes a technical interview, a technical test and a behavioral test.
However, the offer I got was only a basic salary, no bonus, and no subsidies. I communicated with the recruiter, and the final answer I got was: "This is the best offer, and it can't be increased." So, I refused. After all, this offer was just an alternative.
Snapchat
During this time, I also interviewed at Snapchat. The entire interview process was long and boring, no less difficult than Google. Nonetheless, their team at Vienna is truly top-notch and if you like computer vision, definitely consider them! The interview process of
is as follows:
- behavioral test, mainly talking about past projects;
- C++ technical assessment;
- introduces a project that has been participated in to the team;
- virtual on-site interview:
- computer vision technology interview + behavioral test;
- computer vision Interview with probability/statistics technology + behavioral test;
- programming interview with C++ and CS knowledge + behavioral test;
- programming interview with C++ and optimization questions + behavioral test;
- programming interview with Python and machine learning questions + behavioral test.
A few days later, I received the offer! The salary packages they offer are slightly lower than Meta. I explained to the recruiter that the offer had a very low base salary and no bonuses, and they understood but seemed to have no room for adjustment. Since I liked the team so much, I asked for a few more days to think about it.
The entire interview process at Google is extremely long! But I had expected it.
- Video call: Short technical interview;
- technical test;
- Virtual on-site (two days):
- Behavioral test , we can continue to move forward. Later, I had another phone interview with a machine learning team.At the same time, they also inquired about offers from other companies.
A few days later, I received an email from Google. I was ecstatic because not only did I get the offer, but the salary package exceeded Meta! This is also the best offer I have ever received!
To be honest, I am already planning to accept this offer, but I want to seize this opportunity to practice my negotiation skills. I gave myself a pep talk: I had done really well in the interview at Google, and I had a lot of other offers, so I still had leverage.
So I spoke with the recruiter and our call lasted 30 minutes. I was under a lot of pressure and panicked inside, but I pretended to be calm and reasoned. The next day, he brought the good news that they had added an additional amount of equity to my offer.
Yelp
The interview process at Yelp was very interesting.
- Online test
- Machine learning design test
- Virtual site:
- Machine learning design
- Technical interview
- Behavioral test 1
- Behavioral test 2
After a round of negotiations, the final offer given by Yelp was similar to Meta. I absolutely love the culture at Yelp and everyone I meet is so friendly. This was the most enjoyable interview experience for me.
final decision
It’s the critical moment to make the final decision! I feel very lucky to have gotten to where I am today. At the same time, I am also proud of the hard work I have put in.
In the end, I chose Google. Because the total salary they give is much higher, and their team is mainly engaged in machine learning modeling, and my goal is to become a machine learning engineer.
At first, I was a little worried about my career development, and the offers I got were below average. However, I understand that once a low-level position is completed, it is not that difficult to get promoted and get a salary increase, so I feel at ease.
Maybe in a few years, I need to look for new opportunities and re-evaluate my positioning. However, at this moment, I just hope to study hard, grow and thrive at Google, and contribute as much as I can.
Original address: https://ludoro.github.io/blog/career/2022/02/14/newgrad.html
This article is a CSDN translation. Please indicate the source for reprinting
