Let’s see. Where to start. Let’s start with my background. I did a bachelor’s in chemistry & physics at the University of Houston. Then, I entered the chemistry Ph.D. program at the University of Chicago. Then I decided I didn’t want a Ph.D. all that much. Ok, that’s fine. Except, it was July 2021. Almost 1.5 years after March 2020, and the world still hadn’t turned the right side up yet. So, here’s roughly what I did.
TL;DR: It took ~200 rejections and 5 months but I got it!

July 2021
I applied for ~ 30 jobs, mostly via LinkedIn. In what fields? All over. I wasn’t particular at this stage and wanted to see what would stick. Did a bunch of informational interviews, mostly to see how people with similar backgrounds to mine went about it. Got a few referrals that didn’t really go anywhere. Met a UChicago alumnus that really cheered me on, bless her heart. I was still enrolled in the Ph.D. program at this stage for visa reasons.
Did Anything Stick?
Weirdly enough, OpenAI. There was a DS opening in their AI Alignment team. The job description looked reasonable, so I applied and didn’t think anything of it. But then they contacted me. I didn’t pass. Honestly, I hadn’t heard of AI ethics until then, so I didn’t expect to pass.
On July 28, I filed for OPT online (for you international folks out there).
Aug 2021
I applied for ~100 jobs, both on LinkedIn & Indeed. I discovered that it costs employers money to post jobs/do recruitment on LinkedIn so I may be missing out on opportunities if I just apply via LinkedIn.
All The Fringe Stuff I Did
What else did I do this month… Hm… Oh yeah, I wrote my first blog post here (shameless promotion, much?). I applied for Correlation One’s Data Science For All/Women Program (that’s a mouth-full, let’s call it DS4AW). I created a profile on Sharpest Minds, just in case. I also brought out the old ‘Introduction to Statistical Learning,’ and started learning about neural networks via the FastAi course, and did some projects from there.
Did Anything Stick?
Got an interview at Civis Analytics, and later rejected. I think it showed that I was too green to take on business-level data science. They weren’t wrong.
I got accepted to DS4AW! Also, a mentor on Sharpest Minds was interested in my profile and reached out. I decided it was too early to sign on though.
How Did You Feel During This Stage?
Oh, thank you for asking, you’re so sweet. Awful. Umm, I don’t fully understand what happened there. My anxiety went rampant. My sleep quality tanked. On top of being anxious, I was angry all. the. time. I was an international student, which meant I was locked out of so many job opportunities. That realization combined with bad sleep was the perfect concoction for a very nasty Asian girl. In hindsight, it’s a miracle I managed to do all the things I mentioned during this time.
On Aug 28, I left my Ph.D. program. My husband quit his job soon after.
Sep 2021
I applied for ~50 jobs. But I switched my strategy. It became clear to me that my profile was not the most competitive for for-profit industries. So, I applied to a mixture of industry and national labs. I also applied for a few unpaid internships facilitated by UChicago to have something on my CV.
Did Anything Stick?
One startup expressed interest in me. I looked at the CEO’s LinkedIn profile, and his headline was something along the line of ‘If you don’t innovate, you get fired.’ In the words of Ariana Grande, ‘thank you, next.’
I got an unpaid digital media analyst internship with the Illinois Science Council through UChicago. They’re a non-profit that aims to market science to adults. It was a refreshingly different from what I’ve been used to, and now I wonder if operating a non-profit is in my future.
I got a coding interview with PostEra for a software development position. Full disclosure here, my husband put in the application for me. With all the rumors going around that women are less likely to apply for job postings than men with the same credentials, I just let him take the wheel. Didn’t quite pass the coding interview, though. At the end of the day, I’m a chemist who programs, not a programmer who knows chemistry.
Around the same time, NREL called me about a year-long computational chemistry internship that involved neural networks! It seemed like the perfect fit, and I passed the interviews only to be told that they couldn’t bring me on because I wasn’t eligible for the role. However, there might be some work-around to bring me in, so stay tuned?
Oct 2021
I applied for ~20 jobs. I targeted national labs exclusively because I seem to have the most luck there.
Did Anything Stick?
I got an interview for a post-master RA position at PNNL. It was in bioimaging and the PI was looking for someone with my background, who can later branch into quantum computing. I had mixed feelings about this position. When I entered grad school, I wanted to do quantum computing, but got introduced to neuromorphic computing and went along with it. The opportunity to do quantum computing this time around sounds very exciting, but is it practical? There are only a handful of companies that do anything ‘quantum’ currently and I doubt that would change anytime soon, despite all the hype. But regardless, I think it showed during the initial interview that I wasn’t really interested in the role, so no callback.
A few leads via LinkedIn, but it was a mixture of not the right fit, and visa issues that killed them. But hey, LinkedIn doesn’t not help.
Nov 2021
I just didn’t bother at this point. My husband got a job in San Francisco, and we were making a big move so I decided to put a pause on Job Hunting. But it was also for my health, ya know? Yet…
Did Anything Stick?
A bunch of things happened at once. We moved to SF at the beginning of November, and couldn’t find a place to live. So, for a few weeks we were staying at a hotel with very spotty wi-fi and poor cellular reception. It was during these weeks that a few places decided they wanted to talk to me – preferably via Zoom with presentations to boot. My 5-year-old, abused, abandoned and malware-infested MSI laptop with an expired Microsoft license somehow carried me through it all. I came out with 2 offers, and one from NREL!
I took the salary hit to go with NREL, for a few reasons. But I’m not yet sure how good they are yet. We’ll see, I guess.
So What Did I Learn?
As much as people tell me that I should have no problem getting a job given my background, there are so many caveats here.
My Competitive Advantage Was Science
I met with a career counselor who told me that there are more opportunities if I’m willing to step out of hard science. And she’s right, there are. But I didn’t account for the fact that in that pool, I don’t have much of a competing advantage. The interviews and two offers I got were from companies that were looking for people like me, someone with a science background who can code. That’s a much smaller pool of candidates.
I CHOOSE to Be Unemployed
I feel like I might have aged a few years in those short months of job-hunting. It took sitting down & writing this post for me to realize it wasn’t that long of a time. In those few months, I often felt unwanted. There are only so many rejections you can take before you start imploding, you know? But now and again, I would have recruiters contacting me about chemistry/biochemistry roles that I would be strongly qualified for. And I turned them down, because I didn’t want to be a wet-lab chemist. Those messages significantly lifted my mood, because they remind me that I have a choice here. I choose to turn down certain jobs so that I can get ones more suited to me.
It’s amazing how much framing can help, amirite?
Cold Applying Still Works, But You Gotta Have Thick Skin
None of the interviews that I secured were through referrals or emailing. I tried to network, but it didn’t seem to go anywhere so I just didn’t bother after a while. But man, the next time I do this, I’d probably be more targeted. I thought I had thick skin until I kept getting inundated with rejection emails on the daily. Glad that’s over.
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