O'Reilly Machine Learning Interviews course returns

Hi, Susan here: I have more Machine Learning Interview news for you.

1. O’Reilly ML Interviews course

2. Toronto ML Summit talk (I’ll send the slides to this newsletter after the conference)

3. Getting job application responses in this market

Hear what previous attendees are saying:

“Loved this course. Thank you so much. This has been very helpful.” — Attendee, January cohort

I’m speaking at the Toronto ML Summit on July 15. My talk is about growing your ML career via writing and speaking. No worries if you aren’t in the Toronto area and can’t attend, I will be sending out the slides here after the event is done. Here’s what you’ll learn:

- Starting Your Journey: Tips for getting started with technical writing and speaking.
- Career Growth Opportunities: How to leverage writing and speaking for career advancement.
- Building an Audience: Strategies for establishing and growing your audience.
- Keynoting at Conferences: Insights into becoming a conference speaker.
- Book Writing: Steps to securing a book deal and publishing process.

The company I work at has been hiring recently, and I’ve resumed being an interviewer. What I’m noticing is this: we are getting tons of applicants and it’s increasingly hard to filter the ones that are qualified and suitable so that we can interview them.

Going for a higher effectiveness per application approach when you’re applying for jobs is still the best strategy: Referrals being high effort and high effectiveness.

Image source: Machine Learning Interviews, Susan Shu Chang (O’Reilly)

I recently referred someone to another team at my company, and they got an interview already. So, what can you do in your situation?

1. Go to meetups and conferences, and meet people. I recommend to not ask for a referral the very first time you meet someone, since they don’t know your skills well enough to say if they can vouch for you.

2. Have a natural conversation, and make sure you mention your skills and interests. Also make sure you do have evidence (projects, experience) that back those skills up. If you don’t already, you need to do more work and improvement before getting referrals.

3. If later, you do see some jobs that fit your skills, there are now more people that know of your skills that might be willing to vouch for you and refer you.

The key thing is to not expect everyone to refer you just because they know you (much less complete strangers). Your relationships and friendship with these people are also not short-term and transactional; people in the industry know each other for years before referring. Meeting people takes time, so you don’t want to do this only when you’re looking for a job. Networking happens at all times; if you’re only doing it when you have a short timeline to look for a job, it won’t be as effective.

To learn more, read my related post “Why networking is like investing in an index fund”