I’m going to be graduating with my PhD in physics (theory) this coming spring and am beginning to look for jobs.
Any tips? Any mistakes you made when looking for jobs that you can tell me about? For those already with jobs in the technology industry: if you could go back in time what would you change about the way you searched for jobs?
Less likely but still worth asking: if you happen to know of a job in either the Baltimore/Washington/Virginia area or in the Bay area that I might be qualified for don’t hesitate to tell me about it.
First of all, don’t neglect your university’s resources. Network like hell. Find out where other recent graduates ended up. Ask all professors who will give you the time of day if they have industry connections they would refer you to. Go to the career center. Go to career fairs. Print out tons and tons of resumes.
Speaking of resumes, what are your skills other than theoretical physics? And how wedded to doing physics in your job are you? If you can reasonably put R or MATLAB or even SQL on your resume, let alone proper programming languages or projects, you’ll be opening up worlds of opportunities as an analyst or data scientist. Learn about how to use LinkedIn. Optimize your resume for visibility to keyword-based recruiters.
I strongly recommend a job search approach where you try to get as many responses as you can, THEN prune down. You’ll get interviewing experience and you’ll get to see some options you might not have considered.
I’m not at all wedded to doing physics in my next job, I’d be happy to switch to something more engineering/computer based or even (slightly less so) financial.
Skills wise I try to stress that I have multiple first authored publications (so I’m decent at writing) and several presentations at conferences and to funding agencies (good at speaking). Outside of that though I am very proficient at Mathematica and have what I’d call ‘hobbyist’ knowledge of python (I can write small scripts and programs, use libraries like SciPy).
This leaves me in a spot where I’m almost qualified for data science positions but not quite what they’re looking for because I don’t have enough programming experience.
Thanks for the tips, I hadn’t thought about approaching other professors besides my advisor for networking purposes.
Okay. Sounds like you should consider finance/quant positions (distinguish the ones that expect C++ knowledge from those that are looking for the math background), technical writing, data science, and maybe McKinsey style consulting/analyst positions (lots of companies have internal positions like this, as do VC firms).
You have a while, so you could easily give yourself a crash course in SQL and bolster your python, which would put you into the “good at programming for a non-programmer” field in most people’s estimation.
I mention consulting, because it does involve a lot of writing and presenting, you’ll learn a lot about business and open up tremendous career opportunities. If you have kind of a workaholic personality, it could be a good decision (but if travel and stress and unbreakable deadlines aren’t your thing, maybe steer clear). Similar positions internal to companies are lower-stress but lower-opportunity. Your degree is definitely an asset in applying too.
If you’re a citizen and don’t mind it, the department of defense consulting complex (MITRE is an interesting company) might be interesting to look at.
My experience is that the salary for your first job is more important than you think, because future salaries are always anchored off your previous one. So for the first job in particular it’s worth going for a less nice but higher paying job (also, hedonic treadmill).
Keep your applications targeted. I’ll normally apply to less than 10 places, but each will be one where I’ve read about the company and tailored my cover letter. I’ve found this more effective than spamming out my CV to a lot of places.
I’ve had success with and without recruiters, so I can’t really say one way or the other there. That said, the best return on effort when looking for tech industry jobs is definitely Hacker News’ monthly “who’s hiring” thread.
Some companies will be shockingly unreasonable. Just be prepared for that to happen, and respond appropriately; don’t assume there’s some kind of EMH in play where anything a company does has to be sensible.
Get two offers. Don’t stop looking just because you have an offer or two. You have a lot more leverage when you have multiple offers.
Trust your gut. If a place feels unpleasant, it probably is unpleasant. If the person who interviews you rubs you the wrong way, the company culture probably will (this is not true for initial phone screens, which tend to be done by someone unrelated to anything). Make sure you speak to the person who’s going to be your direct manager—how you get on with them is probably going to have a much bigger impact on your workplace happiness than anything else.
Oh my goodness are you doing it wrong. Your next employer will ask what your last salary was. Yes, of course they will ask. But woe to you if you actually answer! You have much to learn young padawan.
Employer: “So how much did you make at your last job?”
Candidate: “My salary expectation is __.”
Employer: “Oh I see what you did there. Well how about …”
Unfortunately it’s often not that simple, and it frequently requires Advanced Techniques. (E.g.: The recruiter is pushy and insists on a salary, and you have to use verbal judo of some kind. OR some piece of technology insists on a salary in a form, and won’t let you proceed without entering one. Etc.)
This is true, although the lesson I would draw is to build up your personal network so that you’re not going through recruiters to get jobs, and specialize enough that you’re not directly comparable with typical other candidates.
By the way, funny having this conversation with you! See you on friday ;)
… Oh, hi Mark! Didn’t read your username there! :D I’m not sure we ever settled on a specific time or location for Friday but I’m looking forward to chatting with you guys.
It is possible to de-anchor salary expectations from your old job. You just need a good excuse. Moving to an area with a high cost of living—like, say, Silicon Valley—is a good excuse. So is “I was working for a startup and most of my job’s expected value was locked up in equity”.
“My last company systematically underpaid everyone” isn’t, even if your last company systematically underpaid everyone. It may be true, but the people interviewing you won’t usually bother to find out, and it sounds bad either way.
There’s problems getting a physics job around the Washington area? I’d think with NASA, NSA, DoD, several large research universities (including the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab), and all the large government contractors (Lockheed Martin in Bethesda MD, etc.) it would be relatively easy to find something.
The problem with many of the government labs is that they want post docs and not employees, and I’d rather just skip that and start as an actual employee somewhere.
In addition many of the places I’ve applied (many of which you listed) have very long application processes (months) which means I’m in the dark as to whether I’ll get zero offers or an offer from every place which I applied. Therefore I’d like to be cautious and cultivate as many options as possible.
Lastly, I tend to get into situations like these (ones with big decisions and many unclear options) and end up realizing in retrospect that there were more interesting opportunities available than the one I took, but that I panicked and didn’t properly explore the options. So I’m trying to make a serious effort of looking for and apply to ‘out of the box’ employment options.
Have you thought about big bucks in Si-valley or finance? I kind of envy physicists because I feel like they have the kind of math skills that lets them figure out anything from first principles.
I’d be happy to work in Silicon valley or finance, and I’ve applied to the big ones like Google and Microsoft but it’s kind of tough to find companies to apply to. Another commenter recommended the HN monthly hiring post, which is a good resource but very focused on programming.
That’s not quite what it feels like from the inside either. It’s more like, “You’re looking at this enormous noodle soup! Well, let’s see what we can say with certainty, and let’s poke around for useful approximations. If that doesn’t work, I got nuffin’.”
Physicists tend to have very good modeling chops. A fellow in the early 1900s (Ising) was trying to come up with a model for ferromagnetism and came up with Markov random fields, basically. That is amazing to me.
Meanwhile, in psychometrics: “I know, let’s model intelligence by one number!”
edit: There is some controversy about how much of this was Ising vs Ising’s advisor. This does not affect my point about physicists, though.
Right, I kind of swept that under the rug as part of approximations—as in, ‘try making a seemingly overly-simple model of the individual components and see if the relevant behavior emerges’. Could have been clearer on that.
I’m going to be graduating with my PhD in physics (theory) this coming spring and am beginning to look for jobs.
Any tips? Any mistakes you made when looking for jobs that you can tell me about? For those already with jobs in the technology industry: if you could go back in time what would you change about the way you searched for jobs?
Less likely but still worth asking: if you happen to know of a job in either the Baltimore/Washington/Virginia area or in the Bay area that I might be qualified for don’t hesitate to tell me about it.
First of all, don’t neglect your university’s resources. Network like hell. Find out where other recent graduates ended up. Ask all professors who will give you the time of day if they have industry connections they would refer you to. Go to the career center. Go to career fairs. Print out tons and tons of resumes.
Speaking of resumes, what are your skills other than theoretical physics? And how wedded to doing physics in your job are you? If you can reasonably put R or MATLAB or even SQL on your resume, let alone proper programming languages or projects, you’ll be opening up worlds of opportunities as an analyst or data scientist. Learn about how to use LinkedIn. Optimize your resume for visibility to keyword-based recruiters.
I strongly recommend a job search approach where you try to get as many responses as you can, THEN prune down. You’ll get interviewing experience and you’ll get to see some options you might not have considered.
I’m not at all wedded to doing physics in my next job, I’d be happy to switch to something more engineering/computer based or even (slightly less so) financial.
Skills wise I try to stress that I have multiple first authored publications (so I’m decent at writing) and several presentations at conferences and to funding agencies (good at speaking). Outside of that though I am very proficient at Mathematica and have what I’d call ‘hobbyist’ knowledge of python (I can write small scripts and programs, use libraries like SciPy).
This leaves me in a spot where I’m almost qualified for data science positions but not quite what they’re looking for because I don’t have enough programming experience.
Thanks for the tips, I hadn’t thought about approaching other professors besides my advisor for networking purposes.
Okay. Sounds like you should consider finance/quant positions (distinguish the ones that expect C++ knowledge from those that are looking for the math background), technical writing, data science, and maybe McKinsey style consulting/analyst positions (lots of companies have internal positions like this, as do VC firms).
You have a while, so you could easily give yourself a crash course in SQL and bolster your python, which would put you into the “good at programming for a non-programmer” field in most people’s estimation.
I mention consulting, because it does involve a lot of writing and presenting, you’ll learn a lot about business and open up tremendous career opportunities. If you have kind of a workaholic personality, it could be a good decision (but if travel and stress and unbreakable deadlines aren’t your thing, maybe steer clear). Similar positions internal to companies are lower-stress but lower-opportunity. Your degree is definitely an asset in applying too.
If you’re a citizen and don’t mind it, the department of defense consulting complex (MITRE is an interesting company) might be interesting to look at.
My experience is that the salary for your first job is more important than you think, because future salaries are always anchored off your previous one. So for the first job in particular it’s worth going for a less nice but higher paying job (also, hedonic treadmill).
Keep your applications targeted. I’ll normally apply to less than 10 places, but each will be one where I’ve read about the company and tailored my cover letter. I’ve found this more effective than spamming out my CV to a lot of places.
I’ve had success with and without recruiters, so I can’t really say one way or the other there. That said, the best return on effort when looking for tech industry jobs is definitely Hacker News’ monthly “who’s hiring” thread.
Some companies will be shockingly unreasonable. Just be prepared for that to happen, and respond appropriately; don’t assume there’s some kind of EMH in play where anything a company does has to be sensible.
Get two offers. Don’t stop looking just because you have an offer or two. You have a lot more leverage when you have multiple offers.
Trust your gut. If a place feels unpleasant, it probably is unpleasant. If the person who interviews you rubs you the wrong way, the company culture probably will (this is not true for initial phone screens, which tend to be done by someone unrelated to anything). Make sure you speak to the person who’s going to be your direct manager—how you get on with them is probably going to have a much bigger impact on your workplace happiness than anything else.
Oh my goodness are you doing it wrong. Your next employer will ask what your last salary was. Yes, of course they will ask. But woe to you if you actually answer! You have much to learn young padawan.
Employer: “So how much did you make at your last job?”
Candidate: “My salary expectation is __.”
Employer: “Oh I see what you did there. Well how about …”
(negotiation starts here)
Unfortunately it’s often not that simple, and it frequently requires Advanced Techniques. (E.g.: The recruiter is pushy and insists on a salary, and you have to use verbal judo of some kind. OR some piece of technology insists on a salary in a form, and won’t let you proceed without entering one. Etc.)
This is true, although the lesson I would draw is to build up your personal network so that you’re not going through recruiters to get jobs, and specialize enough that you’re not directly comparable with typical other candidates.
By the way, funny having this conversation with you! See you on friday ;)
… Oh, hi Mark! Didn’t read your username there! :D I’m not sure we ever settled on a specific time or location for Friday but I’m looking forward to chatting with you guys.
It is possible to de-anchor salary expectations from your old job. You just need a good excuse. Moving to an area with a high cost of living—like, say, Silicon Valley—is a good excuse. So is “I was working for a startup and most of my job’s expected value was locked up in equity”.
“My last company systematically underpaid everyone” isn’t, even if your last company systematically underpaid everyone. It may be true, but the people interviewing you won’t usually bother to find out, and it sounds bad either way.
There’s problems getting a physics job around the Washington area? I’d think with NASA, NSA, DoD, several large research universities (including the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab), and all the large government contractors (Lockheed Martin in Bethesda MD, etc.) it would be relatively easy to find something.
The problem with many of the government labs is that they want post docs and not employees, and I’d rather just skip that and start as an actual employee somewhere.
In addition many of the places I’ve applied (many of which you listed) have very long application processes (months) which means I’m in the dark as to whether I’ll get zero offers or an offer from every place which I applied. Therefore I’d like to be cautious and cultivate as many options as possible.
Lastly, I tend to get into situations like these (ones with big decisions and many unclear options) and end up realizing in retrospect that there were more interesting opportunities available than the one I took, but that I panicked and didn’t properly explore the options. So I’m trying to make a serious effort of looking for and apply to ‘out of the box’ employment options.
Have you thought about big bucks in Si-valley or finance? I kind of envy physicists because I feel like they have the kind of math skills that lets them figure out anything from first principles.
I’d be happy to work in Silicon valley or finance, and I’ve applied to the big ones like Google and Microsoft but it’s kind of tough to find companies to apply to. Another commenter recommended the HN monthly hiring post, which is a good resource but very focused on programming.
Right...
That’s not quite what it feels like from the inside either. It’s more like, “You’re looking at this enormous noodle soup! Well, let’s see what we can say with certainty, and let’s poke around for useful approximations. If that doesn’t work, I got nuffin’.”
Physicists tend to have very good modeling chops. A fellow in the early 1900s (Ising) was trying to come up with a model for ferromagnetism and came up with Markov random fields, basically. That is amazing to me.
Meanwhile, in psychometrics: “I know, let’s model intelligence by one number!”
edit: There is some controversy about how much of this was Ising vs Ising’s advisor. This does not affect my point about physicists, though.
Right, I kind of swept that under the rug as part of approximations—as in, ‘try making a seemingly overly-simple model of the individual components and see if the relevant behavior emerges’. Could have been clearer on that.
.