Job Hunting for Your Future Personal experiences sharing

Job Hunting for Your Future Personal experiences sharing by Chao 2012 -10 -29 1

Career Path • Professor/Postdoctoral Fellow – Well-respected career, 尊師重教 – 《韓愈師說》：師者，所以傳道授業解惑也。 – Educate students: knowledge, life experience – Pioneer the research: advance human being’s knowledge in a field 2

Career Path • Entrepreneurship – Brilliant ideas? • Page. Rank was developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1996, published in 1998, patented in 2001, be the foundation of Google shortly • Technology in Rank. Dex was developed by Robin Li in 1996, patented in 1999, be the foundation of Baidu shortly – A group of team sharing the same goal – Solid engineering skills – Business plan – With the spirit of adventure, 成王”敗寇” 3

Career Path • Industry – Make your ideas impact hundreds of millions of users • Join Baidu your idea may impact 80% of search market in China • Join Tencent, your idea may impact more than 600 million unique users – Make cool product by utilizing your research expertise – Conservative, balance between income and risk – Join a well established company 4

Career Path • We have so many successful 師兄師姐 worldwide, pursuing their different careers • What to choose for your own? Follow your heart! 5

Job Hunting in Industry • • Prepare yourself Start job hunting Things you will experience Settle down 6

Job Hunting in Industry • • Prepare yourself Start job hunting Things you will experience Settle down 7

Prepare Early • Thanks to Michael’s and Irwin’s recommendations, many of us have the opportunity to intern in top-tier companies • Google, Microsoft, Baidu… • Intern experiences would +++ competence • Academic visit also helps – Haiqin’s visit to Stanford – Yilei’s, Kangyu’s and Qirun’s visit to US university 8

Company in China • Beijing (BJ), Shanghai (SH), Hangzhou (HZ), Shenzhen (SZ) • Google (BJ, SH) • Microsoft ATC, STB, Bing (BJ, SH) • Microsoft Asia (BJ) 9

H 1 B in US (Borrowed from Hao Ma) • US is more complicated than China – H 1 B is a non-immigration visa in US – Allows US employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations – Applications start from April 1 st, and can only start working on Oct 1 st – Every year quota: 65, 000 + 20, 000 • Link – Academic postdocs have different J 1 and H 1 visas 11

Useful Website • Job website in HK – http: //www. efinancialcareers. hk/ (recommended by Haiqin) • Update your profile in Linked. In – Headhunters would find appropriate candidates from Linked. In profile 12

Other Good Job Sites (List borrowed from Hao Ma) • • • Hotjobs Monster Careerbuilder Indeed Dice … 13

Coding • Coding is a very important part in interview – Data structure • • • Arrays & hashtables Linked List Matrix Bit manipulation Stacks and queues • Strings • Trees & graph – Basic algorithms • • Dynamic programming Divide and conquer Large scale Sorting and searching 14

Books for Coding • Introduction to algorithms • Programming pearls • 编程之美 • Design patterns 15

Websites for Coding • http: //zhedahht. blog. 163. com/ – Many coding questions and solutions • http: //www. careercup. com/ – Coding questions of IT company • http: //www. glassdoor. com/index. htm – Coding questions of IT company • http: //www. mitbbs. com/bbsdoc/Job. Hunting. html – Job hunting forum of MITBBS 16

Practice Coding • • • Practice coding in Google docs Practice coding in http: //collabedit. com/ Practice coding on white board Practice coding on white paper DO NOT practice in Visual Studio, eclipse 17

Prepare CV • CV could be many pages for Ph. D students (personal opinion) • List publications, academic activities, interns, reviewer experience, etc. • You must know each bullet on your CV! – Remember details on each paper, even co-author paper – Pay attention to each skill you have listed out, if you are not familiar, not list it! 18

Job Hunting in Industry • • Prepare yourself Start job hunting Things you will experience Settle down 19

Procedure • Big companies all have their own job sites – Google, Microsoft, Baidu, Tencent, etc. • Normal procedure 1. 2. 3. 4. Submit your CV Written test Phone interview/video interview Onsite interview 20

Accelerated Procedure • Refer by friends in the company – Skip written test – Usually guaranteed to have a phone interview/video interview – Big companies all have referral process 21

Job Hunting in Industry • • Prepare yourself Start job hunting Things you will experience Settle down 22

Interview at Google • 1 written test + >= 4 onsite interviews • I have experiences 3 onsite/video interviews because intern transfer procedure • Coding, coding and coding • Google doc, paper, white board (very small size) • Bi-lingual interview (Chinese + English) • Google expectation on coding (also other companies’) – Propose and write a basic approach – Revise and optimize the basic approach to a better shape, space complexity & time complexity 23

Interview at Baidu • • • 1 written test + 3 – 4 onsite interviews NLP department - machine learning group Coding on white paper Introduce and discuss your research work Discussion on solving product design problem Personality, communication and team work 24

Interview at Tencent • 1 phone interview + 6 onsite interviews • Tencent has the largest SNS in China 25

Interview at Tencent • Discuss your research paper or project in quite detail • Introduce your work to a non-expert user • Real world product design problem, open problem • Coding on white papers 26

O(N 3) Solution int max. Sub. Sum 1(const vector<int>& a) { int max. Sum = 0; for (int i = 0; i < a. size(); ++i) Most straightfor (int j = i; j < a. size(); ++j) { forward approach int this. Sum = 0; for (int k = i; k <= j; ++k) We could save this. Sum += a[k]; if (this. Sum > max. Sum) computation on this max. Sum = this. Sum; for loop } return max. Sum; } 28

O(N 2) Solution int max. Sub. Sum 2(const vector<int>& a) { int max. Sum = 0; for (int i = 0; i < a. size(); ++i) { int this. Sum = 0; for (int j = i; j < a. size(); ++j) { this. Sum += a[j]; if (this. Sum > max. Sum) max. Sum = this. Sum; } } return max. Sum; } An improved version of most straight-forward approach 29

O(NLog. N) Solution Divide and conquer 30

O(N) Solution int max. Sub. Sum 4(const vector<int>& a) { int max. Sum = 0, this. Sum = 0; for (int j = 0; j < a. size(); ++j) { this. Sum += a[j]; if (this. Sum > max. Sum) max. Sum = this. Sum; else if (this. Sum < 0) this. Sum = 0; } return max. Sum; } 32

Job Hunting in Industry • • Prepare yourself Start job hunting Things you will experience Settle down 33

Choose Offer • Again, follow your heart • Expertise matching • Pure research VS. R & D VS. Pure D – Pure research: MSRA, MS Redmond (arguable) – R & D: Google, Baidu, Tencent – D: I didn’t try this… • Company style • Package 34

• Q&A • Thanks! 35