Internship & Your Application

1. Internship & Your Application • Jiwen Cai

2. About Myself • goodcjw@YSSY, Jiwen CAI • Email: goodcjw2@gmail.com Website: jiwen.info • Senior undergraduate student of the School of Information Security Engineering • Visiting student in Microsoft Research Asia(MSRA). • I’ll attend UCLA’s CS department as a graduate student in the fall of 2010.

3. Highlights • FAQ about internship and GOA application • Preparing for the internship application • My life in MSRA • Notice: all the following information is my personal opinion based on my personal experience. DO NOT consider it as rules or musts.

4. FAQ • Is it necessary to get involved in internship? • What will you learn from internship? • What kind of internship will help your application? • How to find a internship?

5. Is it necessary to get involved in internship? • It depends... • If you are aiming at a Master degree, internship is very important. • If you are aiming at a PhD degree, you can still learn from the internship.

6. What will you learn from internship? • You will learn... • How to take an interview. • How a large cooperation works. • How to cooperate will other people in the same team. • How to improve English during work. • How students in other universities think and work.

7. What Kind of Internship Will Help Your Application? • Large international cooperation is the best choice. • Try to find an internship which you want to take it as your career. • Payment and location are not big issues. • It will be helpful if the company has the same culture with your future destination.

8. How to Find Internship? • Some company might arrange large-scale campus intern recruitment. For example, EBay and IBM. • Others might recruit interns any time in the year. For example, Microsoft. • Others might post Job Description on their website or even on YSSY BBS’s Parttime forum. • Actually, the most common situation is that: interns are recruited by internal recommendation.

9. Preparing • Compile a resume of yourself, the earlier, the better. • Check whether you have enough time to take an internship. • Survey all companies in your field that have plans to recruit interns. • Get your qualification and capability ready. • Get ready to receive offer letters and rejection letters.

10. Resume • Survey: How many of you have a resume? • “Because I compiled my first resume in the first year at college, I start to know what to improve very early” -- Shuang YANG, Stanford Fellowship Winner. • Be careful of using the following words: master of..., fully understand... • Do not only puts the name of projects, but describe your contribution in detail.

11. Resume • Actually, a resume in LaTex format is easy to maintain and update in the future, though it is some how difficult to work out the first version. • If possible, I strongly recommend you to register your person website, or add a personal page under your school or lab’s website.

12. Are You Available for Internship • Do not sacrifice your GPA, GRE, or TOEFL. • If you can find a good professor in SJTU to direct your research && you do want to get a PhD in the future, you should consider giving up the summer internship. • Focus, Focus, Focus...

13. Survey All Opportunities • Company’s website • http://msra.cn/recruitment/InternRecruitment.aspx • YSSY’s Parttime board • Poster in the campus • Information shared between students • Other sources: Xiaonei, etc

14. Qualification & Capability • Remember: interns are at the lowest level in the hierarchy of a company. • Qualification: a quality or accomplishment that makes someone suitable for a particular job or activity. • They might not hire the strongest person, but must hire the person matches the job best.

15. Offers and Rejections • Offers: • Compare offers by consulting someone working or worked in that company. • Make sure of the deadline of decision. • Rejections: • Don’t be frustrated and try another one. • If you are determined to work in that company, improve yourself and try again in future.

16. My Life in MSRA • MSRA mode: post-docs are leading pre-docs. • How we recruit? • Our slogan: Work Hard, Play Harder. • Notice: MSRA is a place really different with other departments or companies. The following description might not be applicable to other companies or even other departments of Microsoft.

17. What We are Doing? • Reading paper, lots of paper. • Brainstorming. • Coding. • Carrying out experiments. • Writing a paper, if you are lucky and hard wording.

18. We Are Always Recruiting • Someone consider it is hard to get an internship in MSRA. • Actually, MSRA has about 200 FTE and has 300 intern head count; while other departments of Microsoft has much lower intern-FTE ratio. • If you have done some research in a specified field, the chance of being hired will be increased.

19. We Are Always Recruiting • Some interns are just doing coding or engineering works for a specific project. If you will apply for PhD program in the fall, please point out your eager of doing some real research and publish paper when you are interviewed. • Please focus on the field you have chosen, or make a decision about your field ASAP.

20. Advantages of MSRA • Top CS research institute in China. For some fields live CV or ML, even as competitive as some top universities in US. • FTE and visiting researchers give talks from time to time. Some provides the current research hot points; other will train you to become a good researcher.

21. Advantages of MSRA • Meet students from top universities in China. Many of them and almost every undergraduate will apply for US colleges. • Get some solid recommendation letters. • Get used to the life of a PhD candidate. • Have a great opportunity to get deep tour into our capital city.

22. A Useful Website • http://academic.research.microsoft.com/ • Only for CS students. • This website ranks conferences’ influence by fields. • It also ranks authors (professors).

23. My Conclusion • It is never too late to find an internship. • Focus on your career plan. If you do not have a career plan, focus on making one. • Balance your time.

24. Q & A • Thank you!