How to best talk about publications for ML interviews?
I have 1 first author ML publication and I am interviewing for MLE roles. In ML, publications are often seen as helpful.
Though I am concerned that a recruiter might not understand the impact/significance of a 1st author publication.
How to best describe it? Assuming that recruiters won't read much of the explanation of my contributions and just the first few words of the experience.
A lot of people tend to just spend a summer at a lab contribute a small experiment and get their name on a paper.
In contrast, first author is typically the person who made the most significant contributions over years (coming up with ideas, building, implementing, testing)
I've currently listed it something like:
- First author in building ML to reduce theft in store by X% using AI techniques
- Lead the design, implementation, ran experiments, and used Y technique to do Z
Discussion
(3 comments)- 0
4 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroI'm not an MLE, but I imagine the overall technique is the same: Show the impact. What you have down looks reasonable to me. In other words, follow the advice from here: Explaining Your Experience In A Meaningful Way On A Resume
As a side note, you're probably correct in that recruiters won't put much weight in it as it will probably go over their hands. On your resume, work experience should always come first (assuming you have some), and in this market, the majority of recruiters literally aren't reading past that section anyways. So zooming out, don't spend too much mental energy thinking about this. The best ROI on your time is making the experience section super amazing.
- 04 months agoSoftware Engineer [OP]Taro Community
Thanks Alex. The research/publications is part of my work experience since I got paid to do it at my university as a student researcher. I spent 2 years working on it and I have like only 8 months of actual full time work experience so I am hoping that these publications will be able to separate me from other candidates
I was mostly also wanting to know how to phrase the verbage and bold it for the first line of that job experience
instead of "published a 1st author paper" would something like "lead researcher in publishing a paper achieving X" seem better?
- 04 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
Ah yep, if you only have 8 months of experience, you do sort of need this.
"lead researcher in publishing a paper achieving X"
This seems fine to me. I think it's the best you can do. As mentioned before, this stuff is going to be too esoteric for 99% of recruiters, so don't spend too much time thinking about the perfect verbiage. Just take something reasonable and ship it.
Your time is much better spent going through the job searching course and taking the action items there: [Course] Ace Your Tech Interview And Get A Job As A Software Engineer
I'll talk about this more once I release the resume course, but side projects are another great use of your time as well. You can only go so far optimizing the content of your resume. Once you get diminishing returns, you need to fortify the underlying content to begin with.
