Job Hunters 2013

We have a mailing list which is currently Jobhunters@cs, but is currently being migrated to the new Google @eng system. Also, this page is very young, and we may wish to pull in good areas from the 2010 page.

Organized Activities

Here are some activities we may want to organize to help us prepare:

Moc Interviews

Round 1: Pairs of Peers (repeat as needed and according to interest)

Round 2: Volunteer Professors as interviewers

Ongoing: Sign up to talk with people visiting to give talks -- you may even contact the person's host and ask if the visitor would be willing to give you a mock interview

Possible Questions:

Why did you choose your research area and project?
What other topics are you comfortable with?
What do you obsess over? What do you really sink your teeth into? What keeps you up late working on your research?
What’s the biggest threat to your research idea? What will cause people to stop reading you papers?
What common belief do most technologists hold with which you disagree?
Name a time when you were dissatisfied with your research – when you tink in hindsight you could have done better. Why didn’t you do better? How would you recognize this and change it next time?
Who would you work with at this school?
How would you establish your group?
How many students would you want in your research group?
What resources would you need?

Hot Topics in Computer Science

To help us be interesting and interested in topics beyond our sub-sub-sub-specialties we would like to hold a special "Hot Topics in Computer Science" session where representatives from each area prepare a 5--15 minute presentation about:

What's hot in the area?
What particular institutions known for in this area?
What is UCSD known for?

The idea is to bring people in other areas up to speed so they can talk to more intelligently to interviewers with different backgrounds. There are examples on the 2010 version of this wiki page here.

Job Talk Practice - Practice your job talk and get feedback before the real thing!

Actual Interview Experiences - Share your experiences after returning from your interviews.

Mixer Practice -- Ongoing

Practice your 30-second introduction of yourself at social hour! Look for participants by the color of their cup -- if it's blue, he or she is looking for feedback on his/her spiel. If it's red, they're just practicing. If it's something else, it's just an interesting person you may want to get to know before you graduate! Note: The starting week fo the color-coordination is TBD.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q: Formality of what to wear – does it vary by area of country/school?

Comments