Hello! As the 2025 spring quarter ends, I think I'd just like to share the job hunt experience I had gone through. For background, my degree is from Human-Centered Design and Engineering which is in itself really vague already and hard to place. I've had some successful and great internships at different Microsoft research labs, and also at Twitch. I've worked on two areas of work, one on human-AI/LLM and another on online feedback for live streamers. I've learned and applied a lot of my skills during my PhD, from building prototypes, running statisical analysis, running interviews and user studies, doing thematic analysis and more. Lots to ramble on maybe to just help qualify myself for myself.
Looking back, this could really be one root of my struggle in the job market. While a PhD helps you specialize in one topic, I seem to still be non-specialized as a researcher, which makes it hard for the industry to really put you in a bucket.
In this, I'll talk through some interviews I've had just to paint a picture of what I've applied for and passed the ATS screener.
I'll initially group these Amazon - Applied Scientist, LinkedIn - AI Engineer, Meta - Data Science. These are what I would consider as the most technical or coding jobs that I interviewed for. They all seemed to generally follow the same process of recruiter call -> tech/coding screen (25min leet code into 25min AIML breadth conversation) -> 4-5hour interview (mix of coding and behavioral, distribution varies across the companies). I was able to receive interviews for these jobs through a recruiter reaching out to me on LinkedIn, and friend referrals. My understanding or takeaway from these roles is that if you're not able to execute the first tech/coding screen perfectly, then you wouldn't be able to move onto the next round. Anyway, I didn't get any offer from these since my technical chops were not up to standards.
Maybe I'll add in the Twitch - UX Researcher position here as well, since the format was highly similar to those above, just much less technical. Instead of a 1hour screen call, this was a 30 minute screener with the hiring manager. While there was still a 5 hour interview, it was mostly a mix of behavioral and a technical UXR methods question. As an Amazon subsidiary, they had their own version of the Leadership Principles which is central to their behavioral questions.
Next I'll group these together Apple - AIML Resident, and Tech Impact - Data Science Fellow since they are both 1-year / short-term positions. The AIML resident almost followed the same process as above, but a bit longer. The first round was an "invitation-only" information session, where you would learn about the overall process, meet the project/research hosts, and then go into a breakout room where you'll literally meet the same folks fighting for that 1 position. This was a bit interesting because I remember they maybe had 3 general postings, and there were 10 (?) teams, so they had some sort of matching process that assigned you to your host during this info session. This was then followed by a behavioral or talk about research round with your host manager, and then the 4-5hour interview. I wasn't able to pass the research round with the host manager, because frankly I wasn't sure how I got slotted into that research group.
The Tech Impact interview process was a bit simpler, granted this is probably the smallest organization amongst all listed here, so the interview process was not elaborate as the ones above. This was simply a call with the recruiter, a behavioral round, and a 15-min presentation and 45-minute question-and-answer round.
Finally, the one AP position with CUNY Lehman College - Assistant Professor in Computer Scienee. During this job market, I wasn't really intending to apply to assistant professor positions, and ended up applying to maybe 3-4 positions because of personal relations (i.e. I am a Lehman alum). I wasn't expecting to hear from any positions, but ended up hearing from Lehman College. The first round requested a 2 videos of 20-30 minutes in length: one as a teaching demo for an intro to CS class, and another about my dissertation or research work. There was a big delay until I heard about the next round, which was a 30-minute call with the faculty (I think 6 people showed up?) about current and future research, plans at Lehman etc. Now, if I had made it to the next round, I believe it would have been an onsite to meet administration like the Dean and the Provost, which I did not make it to.
I think this was all to share that it is a confusing and a tough job market. Because of the breadth of my experiences, I could tailor the resume to get at least an interview at these places, but I wasn't good enough to move on in some of these places. I just hope if you ended up here, or are reading this, that this would be helfpul for your job search, and if you have some questions feel free to reach out.