In my PhD career, the first year for prelim, and the second year for Qual. In my third year EE PhD career, having an internship might be helpful to my PhD career, because I can learn from practical and experience people, also I can join a slightly different project to get inspired. In the end of 2019, I decided to start looking for internship.
Unfortunately, things didn't go as I expected.
It was easy and not that easy to find an internship. The very first interview was a startup company spun out of SRI International. I love their CEO, CTO and COO from heart. I had three times interviews with them, and all went very well. There was no hard question. Basically, they wanted to know your more, from personality to your research ideas.
Why you dive into your current research?
How you solve your current problems?
What do you expect to your future?
Once you can know yourself and good personality, you are able to get the offer. So, I got my first internship in my first interviewed company. Ya~~
However, after discussing with my advisor, we decided no to go with that internship because of the research direction was not fully aligned. This is debatable to go or not to go to an internship project that is not fully aligned to your PhD research. Sometimes you get inspired from different project. Anyway, that was our decision and journey keep going.
Interview became harder than I expected.In the following, I have several interviews from startup companies to 10K up company. However, I didn’t do well in those interview. One of most frustrating one was the interview with Aptiv, which is an medium large autonomous driving company.
Aptive’s HR contacted me to know my CV. Luckily, I can go directly to their WeWork office 5 mins away from my home. I can imagine that working with them in that awesome office could be the best thing in my PhD career. The interview has two part, technical part and general part. In the technical interview, I was interviewed to write Python code to solve basic DFS(depth-first search) algorithm to solve a typical problem. Easy, right? Silly me. I have never official took an algorithm class before. Although I can solve those problem, I took me too much time to figure out by myself, and my answer will be not the optimum. In this interview journey, I did 100% well in general part to answer all deep learning question, and 100% bad in technical part to answer coding question. The result is obvious => Reject
Algorithm is very important in the interview.
Sorry I know this too late and waste so many opportunities. My advices to you, “even though you are able solve those problems, speed and optimization are very important in an interview”.
PlayStation is an very interesting company and full of fun obviously. I had some background on computer vision, GPU, and VR. Therefore, I applied for it. There are two interviews, one is 1–on-1 interview with one of their team member, another one is group meeting that you are going to talk with the whole group. In the first interview, again, they want to know you more. They thoroughly read your CV and diveed into your research as they can as possible. They are able to keep asking key questions that amazed you. After an one hour interview with them, I felt exhausted and brain burned. Again, once you get an interview from them, which means they are interested in you. Once you know yourself and know your research, you can pass their first run interview.
However, the second interview is harder than the first one I think. Harder to figure out what they want to know. It was a group meeting and the internet connectivity quality was not good, therefore, we decided to use audio only. Without having video, we lost any possibility to have body language to communicate. They want to dive into their own questions and want to know whether you are able to solve it. However, its like random dots and the questions had no pattern. After several bouncing between our questions, I know I cannot pass this. I felt so sorry for the guy who let my pass in my first interview. Result => Reject
Microsoft is a company whose research was aligned to my research. There are so many outstanding research out from Microsoft. When I was noticed that my interviewer was graduated from MIT with unbelievable achievement, I mean really truly unbelievable, I was so excited to talk with him. During interview with him, there is no like boss or manager attitude toward you. That guy is so humble and kind to have discussion. Although eventually I was rejected, I still thank him for giving me an opportunity. He sent an very long email to me and tell me that I was very good, and it was only 5% of people can get interviewed. After interview, their team actually was not looking for the best person to join their team, instead, they are looking for the next project for their company and who could be the right person. No matter this reason was true or not, I felt comfortable. Next year I might apply again. Thanks.
Amazon is super huge company and I have many friends worked there. I applied for an research intern position and had two interviews with them. Both of the interviews dived into their questions directly. It’s not like “Please introduce yourself”, instead, it’s like “do know ABC, can you explain this?” They asked tons of questions but all very basic. They are like professional interviewers. They are willing to slow down their talking speed and explain in a different way to let you know their questions. The questions I had were similar to this. Try to review that and answer all of them in detail. I enjoy both interviews and finally got an offer from them. Here I want to thank HRs. They arranged interviews for me quickly, and helped me a lot to know Amazon. I can feel that HRs are on your side and want to help you to pass the interview. I appreciate that. Definitely will consider to join them.
Facebook is a super huge company and again I have many friends worked there. Actually, I applied for another company but that one was acquired by FB. Therefore, I ended up interviewing with FB. In total, I interviewed with an COO before that company was acquired, and two interviews with talent PhD team members. They are very professional and know you research very well. We are almost on the same research direction, therefore we made a very productive discussion during the interviews. They are PhDs having tons of citations but still humble and want to leverage your ideas. If you idea is good and consolidate, they want you to join their team. During those three interviews, I didn’t feel much pressure, instead, I was like sharing idea and discussing with them freely. Every interview, we ran out of time and still had many things to discuss. I know it is a good sign, and eventually got an offer. FB HRs are so friendly. They replied email quickly and full of passion. They even don’t want to send an email to you to let you know you have an offer. They want to call you directly to let you know. During the phone call, you can feel they are happy for you. Absolutely, FB is like a family. Definitely will consider to join them.
There too many interviews to write down all my experience. I only pick some them. Glad the result was good. Although COVID-19 was not expected and I might need to virtual onboard and work from home, it was still a fun and good journey.
Stay home, stay healthy