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Ask HN: No responses to applications despite experience and MS (data science)

3 points by throwawaystress ↗ HN
I recently finished a masters in statistics and took multiple machine learning courses in the CS department along the way. I also minored in CS in college and have been "software-engineering-adjacent" for several years, having worked on stored procedures for the backend of a CRM for a couple years, and for a consulting firm doing data analysis in R and Python.

Despite all that, I never hear back from places I applied to. I'd really like to work at a FAANG (especially Microsoft), and it feels like I'll never get there. I thought that by going to grad school I'd kind of jump-start my career in that direction, and instead I'm doing work in SAS for an insurance company. Meanwhile, I'm watching friends who went to a 3 month bootcamp get jobs as data engineers (which is what I'd like to do), and folks I trained at previous jobs go on to become directors of analytics.

What am I doing wrong? I kind of think I need to go back to the drawing board, as I wonder if I'm just not an attractive candidate.

6 comments

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nhgiang
Just my 2 cents: Could it be that the way you present your experience is not focused? You've mastered many difficult topics and proved yourself in many intellectual demanding jobs, that would've made you a desire for many non-FAANG companies. But this time you're aiming for the best of the best, and for them, your achievements may only be average.

It could be that you need to select and prioritize your experience in your CV in such a way that tells the recruiter "I know what you're looking for and I've got it right here".

And even after you got that perfectly, somebody else still could snatch that job from you.

Not trying to sound deep or anything, just want to encourage you to try again :)

throwawaystress
Thanks! How do you recommend prioritizing that experience? I think my resume looks pretty good, but maybe it needs work. It goes: Short profile > skills > education (including coursework) > work experience. I put the education bit before work experience because I just graduated. I also included a link to my GitHub.
nhgiang
I think that's as good as anybody. I think on the Internet, CV advice is no better than medical advice lol.

Don't get fixated on FAANG or any company for that matter. That's vain.

throwawaystress
I guess the reason I want a FAANG job is the career security that comes with knowing that other companies will give me a second look because I have them on my resume. And of course, it feels bad when friends are able to do it and I can’t :(
necovek
At least there's no M in FAANG, so once you get into Microsoft, you'd still not be working in a FAANG company :)

Try networking with some of those MS people you'd be looking to work with.