# Tag Info

27

First, I understand the question, and I personally think it is appropriate for this forum. Second, if they do offer you a job, there should be some discussion of compensation, duties and so on. That would be the time to explain to them that seemingly small, benign changes to an optimization model can have drastic effects on run time, possibly warranting a ...

19

I'll answer this from an employer's perspective. Technical ability is a necessary but not sufficient condition - the skill I value the most in my employees is their ability to manage expectations. I am also very mindful of the fact that most people can't do this well at all. People higher up the chain have better oversight of what needs to be done, why, ...

18

Your examples of "technical skills" are centered on optimization. An understanding of at least some aspects of probability models (especially Markov chains and queues) may be important, depending on the work you do. So might a better-than-minimal understanding of statistical modeling and analysis. Again depending on your work, you might need to be able to ...

17

Just apply for any job you find interesting and you think you can do well. The trick lies in convincing the people hiring that you are great value for money. Although this might seem obvious, my advice would be to also consider adjusting your salary expectations according to your industrial experience. Because asking for too much money is the greatest ...

13

I think domain knowledge is essential if you want to be a good OR practitioner. If you don't know how a supply chain works, designing an optimization model for planning and coordinating a complex supply chain could be difficult and time-consuming. The same goes for healthcare, energy, finance, manufacturing, and other industries. Also, domain knowledge could ...

12

From what I could understand, here is my recommendation for you. Suppose I was on your place starting intern, then I would be setting up my few initial sessions with the manager or team lead to clear out the deliverables. For me, this includes: scoping out the problem, setting solution domain, listing out possible challenges in solving and finally the ...

11

From my experience: 1/ Lookup where the students did their internships in the previous years. Contacting those companies might be a good option, as they might be willing to take an intern coming from your program if they were happy with the experience the previous year(s). 2/ Try to find companies working on product linked to Operations Research (companies ...

11

On top of the websites you mentioned: Search on Google! If this is not what you are already doing, this should be on top of your list. Not all ads are on job sites. Check different companies websites. Some companies ads may not show up in the first pages of your search. So you can focus your search by having some companies in mind. For example, ask your ...

9

Unfortunately writing high quality OR code is beyond the reach of most academic settings. This is mainly because: Writing high quality code is very time consuming. The scope of OR code is much better suited to teams of people rather than a lone wolf trying to do everything alone. Because it's time consuming, there's never enough time in academia to do this ...

9

If by "research" you mean "academe", then yes, people have switched in both directions. I can't name anybody you would necessarily know. A bit of advise I got (from an academic) when I was finishing my PhD (and had two industry offers and one academic offer) was that the switch from academe to industry might be easier than the switch from ...

8

This answers is based on experience from computer science in Germany. Different fields and cultures might differ. However, I think that the core message of my answer is still somewhat applicable in any field, hence I've decided to post it. They may be asking for "industry experience", but as virtually always with job postings, feel free to convince ...

8

Disclaimer: I have worked for 3 years as an optimization software developer at a utility company and now work for Gurobi. Is the expectation for entry level positions, that the applicant is able to produce high quality code, or is that something that would be learned on the job? There is no expectation because it is often not the case (as Nikos said). ...

7

As @Mark L. Stone said your professors, and particularly those you had a course or project could be a good source for the networking. Some websites like this link can be helpful, while I am not sure about those opportunities in Europe. Also, you can find some job (mostly) and internship position posting in the following resources: IEFac.list HigherEd Jobs ...

7

I want to point out that since the company is a web development one, there are probably some computer engineering or computer science graduates in the workforce (perhaps, even in the top-level management). A common area between computer engineering/science with operations research is algorithms and the theory of complexity. Hence, while many computer ...

7

I was on the job market a very long time ago, so this information may be past its use-by date. When I interviewed at an industrial lab, I was told that they treated a successfully completed PhD as the equivalent of $x$ years of experience. I've forgotten the value they gave me for $x$, but I think $x\approx 3$ for them (and would likely vary somewhat for ...

6

I have a bit of perspective on this since I make decisions to hire people to do this kind of work, so I'll share how I think about this. In general, being an OR professional typically requires a PhD, ideally in something industrially relevant. This is by no means always the case, but the field is not yet at a level of user-friendliness that allows people who ...

6

As you said "especially in industry" and if you have a background in IE/MS/Math and to confirm @prubin and @Ehsan, you should know: Each industry has specific factories/organizations which have different departments. (E.g. in the factory: production, quality, planning and ..., in the organization R&D, sale and, ...). Depends on which industry and ...

5

I can really only answer one point: b) Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship I think the examples in the book are even for Java, but it is applicable for other languages as well. (This is the entry book, there are follow up books in this series) What helped me a lot is taking a piece of code i have written and then taking one concept of the ...

5

The Opt-Net mailing list contains lots of position announcements for faculty and industry, including positions in doctoral programs. I don't recall seeing any announcements for internships, but you could check the archive. Also, I'm not aware of any injunctions against asking about internships on it.

4

Being able to elicit a "necessary and sufficient" statement of the "Problem". Being able to structure the "Problem" so as to know whether the proposed Problem Solution is good fit for OR-based approaches. Being able to effectively communicate the benefits, costs and, very importantly, the risks of your recommended approach. The middle one of being able to ...

4

4

First of all, if they want to offer you a job it is because they see value in what you are doing, well done! Since you are the only one with your background it is important that you see yourself as your own "project manager", which requires you to build additional skills besides the pure OR skills. Those skills will also be very valuable for you to create ...

4

It depends of course on what kind of job you are looking for, but the reason for companies looking for experience is just because then want to see a kind of track record. When we look for new people in our team (machine learning developers or (research) data scientists) we are mostly interested in project samples. Besides the appropriate knowledge you've ...

4

Becoming a career academic (or a career anything for that matter) is a long process that requires focus, persistence, luck, and a plan. I have witnessed many disaster stories, so I will attempt to dispel a few common myths that seem to doom people into suffering consequences they did not expect. I will preface this by saying that if the goal is to just do ...

4

I recently got a job as a junior software developer, coming from a biology post-doc. I think what got me the job were my personal programming projects, that clearly showed I was interested, and had some level of aptitude and ability - at least enough to be trainable in a reasonable time frame. Regardless of the exact switch, try looking at yourself as a ...

3

For new comers from IT / Computer and Engineering fields, their first job / internship depends upon their final year project / research thesis. So write the details of your final project on the first page of your CV especially the tools and technologies used in it. Submit it to different technology companies. You'll surely be called for few interviews even ...

2

Being just out of college and the only one in an organization with knowledge in a field is scary. Your bosses will not understand what is hard and what is easy about your job. The other posts about managing expectations are excellent in this regard. You will not get guidance from somebody experienced in the area, which is important to learn what is really ...

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