It’s all about luck, but there are ways to make yourself luckier

When people say that job hunting is a “numbers game”, they usually mean that success depends on (1) how many applications you submit; and (2) how many other people have applied to the same job as you.

On the one hand, the numbers game feels like it’s something that you can control and, on the other hand, a completely random blackhole of luck. This is especially true if you’re cold applying, where there are quite literally thousands of applications that you could apply to and thousands of people applying to the same jobs. But,

Once you land a job, you’ll be working with a team of people. Ultimately, then, the numbers game is human. Understanding this can help you strategically increases your chances for luck to strike.

How do you do this?

Tell people that you’re on the job market

Help others be able to help you. Tell them that you’re on the job market, for what kinds of roles, and when is your specific timeline for transitioning to a new role.

See the previous Writing networking emails: The basic formula, but the meat of any networking email should be something like this:

The more specific you are, the more someone can help:

• formulate actionable advice for your networking chat
• think about and keep an eye out for relevant roles (or even start making steps towards requesting specific full-time or internship headcount for you)
• plan out or keep an eye out for budgeting that may open open up (e.g., for contractor roles)
• introduce you to other connections who have hiring power

The goal is not to wait for or learn about opportunities after the fact but for opportunities to be sent your way or created for you.

This requires giving people enough time to collaborate and strategize with you to stick the landing. Too many times, I’ve seen other people:

• Not know that PhD interns are looking for full-time jobs
  • note: Most PhD interns (e.g., 1st-4th-year grad students) are not looking for full-time jobs, because they are still in the middle of their grad program. Full-timers will not know that you are graduating soon and need a job unless you tell them and moreover, work with them to strategize about headcount.¹
• Not know when contractor’s contracts are ending
• Not know what specific roles people are seeking besides requesting general advice

Find out best communication methods

What is the best way for you to remain on people’s radar? For those without any connections to target companies or teams, it’ll likely be LinkedIn and/or email.

But once you’ve had a first interaction (e.g., networking call, internship, contractor role), figure what is the best way to stay in communication with them. Ask them! In my company, it’s slack. It can take 2 weeks for people to answer a networking email (if they answer at all), but once you’re in the company slack and ask for a networking chat, oftentimes people will answer within 2-24 hours.

For internships, how do you stay in the default company communication channel after the official work period ends? Normally, you’re added to company communication channel as an intern, contractor, or via a guest account. This guest account is very important for PhD students.

A bad, realistic scenario for PhD students: Once you finish a summer internship, you stop working > you stop being paid > you stop having access to e.g., slack > you stop hearing about potential opportunities because you are now outside the system and the barrier for contacting you is much higher than before.

A better, realistic alternative: Once you finish a summer internship, offer to continue collaborating (this usually means working for free, which is obviously not ideal) > you stop being paid, but you remain as a “guest” in the company’s communication system > you can continue asking people for networking chats, have access to guest resources, and hear about company updates (which gives you clues about fiscal cycles for headcount budgeting) > people can then ping you whenever they hear about relevant opportunities.

Ask questions at the end of interviews

It’s not about interviewing with as many companies as you can. It’s about interviewing and getting the job offer. By the time the interview concludes, you want to make sure that your interviewer has all the right information to make you an offer. What you don’t want is for them to leave the interview making judgements on misconceptions about you, especially you as an academic applicant with less industry experience than others.

Here’s an except from my previous post Always ask questions at the end of an interview:

This is your opportunity to ensure that your interviewer will not reject you based on any misconceptions about PhD students or academics, your research field, etc.

Here’s the main question that I ask:

“What are some ways in which you’ve seen PhD students or those with experimental psychology backgrounds struggle in the internship/role?”

Here are some (paraphrased) answers that I have received:

• “PhD students are biased to conducting larger, more complex experiments. This is often at the expense of sharing out results earlier.”
  • This is where I’ve described for running multiple smaller experiments that triangulate around the same research question to get a broader perspective and/or make small progress towards answering that question with each experiment. Critically, I describe how I record and share the results with each iteration.
• “Grad students don’t know how to pivot with changing timelines. For example, if the deadline changes from 3 weeks to 3 days, they will still attempt to do it all by pulling all-nighters rather than scoping down the project.”
  • Most times, timelines change due to resource limitations or assessing future resource expenditure. This is where I’ve described how running pilot studies to get early results, assess resource planning, and iterate on my research plan. Sometimes it’s enough to run a pilot, and sometimes additional studies are needed to address gaps in knowledge that emerge based on the pilot results.
• “Academics don’t know how to collaborate with cross-functional teams”
  • This is where I talk about my experience working with diverse researchers across experimental psychology, computer vision, HCI researchers and designers, modelers, etc. and across universities.
• “It’s hard to understand their slide decks” or “It’s hard for other cross-functional teams to communicate with them if they are uncomfortable with speaking to audiences outside their speciality”
  • This is where I describe how important audience design is to my core research and how I adapt my communication/slides to match the knowledge goals of my audience

A brief description is enough to gently correct any misconceptions and also impress your interview that you have thought deeply about these kinds of problems.

Correct these misconceptions while you can during the interview! You will likely not talk to that specific interviewer again.

Be open to opportunities

One of my Undergrad Mentees taught me what it means “to be cracked”, i.e., extremely skilled, talented, or “goated”. (Example Gen Z usage: “Dude, you’re so cracked, I don’t know how you do it!” Mentoring Gen Z undergrads has always included vocabulary lessons for me.)

This Undergrad Mentee once incredulously wondered out loud to me

Him: “I just feel so lucky. I’ve had so many opportunities [doing internships at multiple universities and PhD-level industry internships].”

Me: “Well, you’re extremely goated”—(I didn’t actually say this)—“and also you were working for free when these paid opportunities were offered to you. So you’ve strategically opened yourself up for being able to take on most of the opportunities that have emerged and therefore, could be offered to you.”

For the next 30min, we talked about how this was something to acknowledge and savor when you’re young and likely have the tolerance to work for free or cheaply for “experience opportunities”. But also how strategies often need to shift when there are different life constraints. (I, too, had also gone through a free-labor period of my early 20s that opened many doors. I can’t with good consciousness recommend this to others, especially those with financial or visa constraints.)

All to say, there are ways to

Take on opportunities that strategically set up you for more opportunities to come your way

Internships are like this. A summer internship often leads to offers for future summer internships, which hopefully lead to full-time job offers.

Lab manager positions in academia help you develop research skills and learn about professors who are accepting new grad students during your application cycle.

Going to conferences as a grad student help you meet professors and learn about which ones are looking for postdocs and which have their own funding or would require you to bring your own.

Some of these roles are natural career steps and opportunities, like being a grad student or lab manager. Others might require you to put in major effort because they are not naturally along your career path or within your career network. It’s about gaining inertia in the right direction.

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AI was not used to write, edit, or brainstorm this post. All mistakes and em dashes are my own.