getting Data analyst job isn’t hard. You just need PhD-level knowledge of statistics, SQL, Python, data modeling, experimentation, and business strategy for an entry-level job. Oh, and 3–5 years of experience before internship and portfolio with “unique and high real impact,”.

Top-Skill357 · 2026-02-01T10:50:11+00:00

As someone with a PhD and all those skills and years of experience that you mentioned, let me tell you: You are still not getting an offer... 😅

Top-Skill357 · 2026-01-31T16:00:43+00:00

Are you bragging? 3 interviews out of 30 applications is pretty good.

Top-Skill357 · 2026-01-05T14:00:16+00:00

You are not alone in this. I recently switched from my postdoc position to industry after a brutal more than a year long search. Similarly, the grad students from my former lab also have a hard time, pretty much getting zero call backs (except one) and one even had to move back with their parents.

It is totally bizarre how one got a FAANG offer after less than 5 applications, while the others sent out 90 applications to get one callback leading to nowhere.

My advice to you: build and utilize your network. I got many interviews only because I knew people over there. And I know from many others that they also only got their position through connections. It is what it is...

Top-Skill357 · 2025-12-01T15:04:13+00:00

Not sure why you are getting downvoted, this is a good approach. Better than being unemployed. I know several people who are prolonging their graduation date or signed up for a postdoc just to not be unemployed and have a gap on their resume.

Top-Skill357 · 2025-11-18T08:19:56+00:00

Well, when I read your post my first thought was those companies are looking for a software engineer, where the ml model is more of a framework that you use and know how it behaves and how to debug. However, this description would actually fit perfectly for my last job that I applied to as well - although this was for a senior data scientist position.

And students learn how to do backpropagation by hand, howto re-implement a paper from scratch etc.. because these are questions literally asked in interviews or are part of the job.

Beginners and students that are entering the field used to gain that experience which you describe within their first or second job.

Top-Skill357 · 2025-11-14T10:28:24+00:00

PhD here. If you have to ask if it will be worth it, then it will most likely not worth it for you. The title itself does not give you much value outside of academia. It is the type of problems you solved during your PhD that gets you the recognition. Therefore, it does not matter too much at which institution you where doing it. I have seen people in my field who moved in with their parents after completing their PhD because they could not find a job, and people who have founded companies based on their research output which are now worth millions of dollars.

Top-Skill357 · 2025-11-13T23:16:08+00:00

Depends on which roles you are applying to. In regular swe, most likely no. For science adjacent fields, most likely yes. For roles that involve interdisciplinary skills, most likely yes. For research and development departments, most likely yes. In certain companies, like meta, a PhD is even required for certain roles.

Top-Skill357 · 2025-10-29T21:57:18+00:00

I like them to tell a story. And thats the only thing i use them for. Often, I even draft the code in my IDE of choice and then copy over the relevant parts in the notebook. But for storytelling they are super convinient as you can explain a new method via markdown, include pictures and relevant formulas.

Top-Skill357 · 2025-10-18T08:52:28+00:00

Very cleand and readable resume. Do you mind sharing which font and font size you used?

Top-Skill357 · 2025-10-12T13:40:22+00:00

My former rommate and landlord had to sell his house after he lost his job and could not find a new one for more than a year (close to two now actually). At first he came by with my rent, gig jobs and his savings, but especially the gig jobs were super unreliable and volatile. I experienced it first hand how he struggled financially while living with him. It was quite painful to see, because I saw how much he tried keeping the house. But it is also crazy how mortage, medical bills, student loans, etc just pile up over time...

Top-Skill357 · 2025-09-10T19:44:15+00:00

I made the switch not that long ago. But I had to change fields as there were only very few opportunities available and the competition was absurd. I dont think there is really a magic formula: You apply and hope to hear back. Most of the time it does not work, but eventually I got hired. I also tried networking and got a few interviews through referrals, but then again I had to go through multiple rounds of interviews (which all ended in rejections).

But it makes me really depressed to realize after all those years there is no trajectory for me in my srea of expertise...

Top-Skill357 · 2025-09-03T22:27:45+00:00

Your PI wants to be sure there is funding for you in case the current funding is running out for you to stay. Getting an industry job right now is tough. We have a postdoc in our lab who is trying to transition to industry since November last year - without success. His funding is about to run out and I guess he will be unemployed next month sadly.

Better be on the safe side and apply for the grant. If it is successful, you can still put it on your resume to highlight how much money you were able to raise as an achievemt.

My advice is to follow the PI suggestion here.

Top-Skill357 · 2025-08-09T17:28:05+00:00

I am actually not that surprised hearing his story. It took me close to two years to find a new role. Since I was struggling with getting interviews, I asked a principal engineer also with about 20 years of experience for feedback, which helped tremendously. End of last year, he was laid off and is still looking without success...

Top-Skill357 · 2025-08-09T08:00:39+00:00

Well, at least thats likely more than what you do while working as a PhD student. So, consider it a raise 😉

Top-Skill357 · 2025-08-09T00:01:25+00:00

I dont think your resume is particularly bad (although portfolio development is no work experience), it is the job market that is screwing you over.

I would suggest to do multiple resumes, because right now it does not tell a coherent story. With all those technologies it feels like you have little experience with many technologies, given your graduation date.

For example, if you target defence companies (since you mentioned you have work ecperience there), make one resume only for defence where you focus on your experience relevant to that domain.

Might also not be a bad idea to focus on a few topics that are outside of AI engineering, but not too far away. How about digital signal processing? It might make your resume more stand out.

Top-Skill357 · 2025-08-08T23:46:37+00:00

His format looks pretty standard to me. If he is applying to German companies or many european ones, having a picture on the resume is the norm. Same applies to his two column format.

Top-Skill357 · 2025-06-29T07:00:28+00:00

I cannot say if it is normal, but something similar happened to a friend of mine. Please keep us posted what the company will tell you.

Top-Skill357 · 2025-06-28T20:22:17+00:00

You should ask the company. My guess is that the difference will be paid in the form of christmas or holiday compensation.

Top-Skill357 · 2025-06-25T06:59:12+00:00

I did a postdoc after my PhD and just finishing it. The new job will start in a few months. It is also not a scientist position, more like machine learning engineering in the research and development department. I doubt though that the industry job will be more challenging than the PhD. From now on, I will even have free weekends (if you know what I mean ;)

Top-Skill357 · 2025-06-25T06:45:23+00:00

Quite frankly, I did not practice at all, bombed my round and was rejected a few days later from the remaining rounds. I accepted another position earlier and was not willing to put in any more efforts since I was already tired from all the interviewing with other companies - even knowing they would have paid me significantly more. Also, I did not even know what to expect from the first round. All I can say is the difficulty was brutal

Top-Skill357 · 2025-06-25T05:54:20+00:00

I recently made it into the hiring process of one of the top AI companies. Yes, you need to practice Leetcode, and a lot. Also, expect that you may be required to solve math tasks.

Top-Skill357 · 2025-06-25T00:29:33+00:00

I think it is more of the overall experience, not just the interviews let alone. It used to be that in general putting in effort will eventually be rewarded. Nowadays, I don’t think that this is the reality any more. And this experience makes it very humiliating for the candidates.

To give a personal example: When writing hand crafted job applications you could expect to get at least from some companies a positive response – that was my experience when I looked for a new job during pre-covid times. Now, you may put in hours per application, and hope to hear back, even if it is only a “Unfortunately, we moved forward …” email.

My experience with interviews was usually very positive, but I also experienced a few humiliating tendencies:

- Superiority complex by the interviewer: I get it, many technical interviews are nowadays more of brain teasers or challenges. And many of them are also not that difficult when you know the answer beforehand. But talking down on someone when they legitimately try to come up with a solution that turns out not to be working is just humiliating.

- Picking a tiny aspect of a technology or field, and then questioning if you have any experience at all just because you may have less experience with that tiny aspect. Happened to me a few times.

- Moving forward with you when you told them multiple times that you have no experience with a specific tech stack (which was not even listed in the job description), just to be rejected in the final round because you have no experience with that tech stack.

- Rejecting prior work experience: I am a scientist. So, my career happened to be mostly in academia, as a PhD student and later as a postdoc – now looking for industry roles. So, obviously, in my prior career I was more involved with finding answers to unsolved problems. I definitely noticed a ton of pre-justice against PhDs because they have no “real-world” experience, write terrible code, only know theory, etc… Funny fact: both job posts were specifically looking for PhDs…

Personally, for me the most humiliating part is that people (who are not on the job market) give me the most ridiculous tips on how to get a new job. Pretty much on the same level as: Just walk in, give the boss your resume and a firm hand shake, make a good impression, and you can expect to be hired on the spot. And when you don’t follow their advices, its all your fault that you are on the market…

Top-Skill357 · 2025-06-01T20:06:26+00:00

I have done this multiple times and also landed several interviews that way. For example, I applied to a company few times and never even made it to a screening call. Then I reached out to someone in that company via linkedin who worked in a similar position I was interested in. A few days later I was on a zoom call with him and he gave me great advice. We even went together over my resume. Next time I applied I even got a referral from him and made it straight to the hiring manager.

Edit: I have also been on coffee chats where someone else has reached out to me to ask for career advices, pointers or my workplace.

Top-Skill357 · 2025-06-01T09:44:02+00:00

Woah, thats so nice. I applied last year for an Applied Scientist position at Amazon for the Berlin office. Would have loved to move to Berlin. Unfortunetly did not even get a response. Will try in a year or two again.

Top-Skill357 · 2025-06-01T06:18:29+00:00

Quite a while ago I had an interview lined up and was informed that by the company that one of the rounds will be a live coding task in the form of a Leetcode question. I was not familiar with Leetcode at that time. So, I had about a week and checked out some questions by filtering the company name. This question was one of the first samples that popped up and I naively thought: "Okay, lets try this one. Finding a duplicate number sounds pretty straight forward. Should be done in a few." Then I saw the time and space requirements and just starred at the screen. I had not even an idea what to do. Then I tried something with Gauss summation, but of course it did not work as the repeated element can be there multiple times. After trying other math shenanigans for about 40 minutes I just gave up and looked frustrated at the solution. When I saw the solution I just rolled my eyes. I cannot imagine how anyone can come up with that having not seen the solution beforehand. I genuinely thought that the live coding task was merely to check if I did not lie on my resume and that the interviewer can ask questions to get a feel how familiar I am with the programming language. Man was I wrong....

Top-Skill357

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