The Graduate Student Job-Search

1
The Graduate Student Job-Search

• Random Topics and Musings,
• By Kevin Buell
• September 19, 2005
• kbuell_at_umich.edu

2
Life, What Matters To You?
Time can not be created, we can not make
time Time can not be stored, we can not save
time All we can do is spend it. How we choose
to spend it should represent what matters to us
in life.

Hours left 7 Days a week 168 hr/w
168 Sleeping
56 hr/w 112 (168-56) Average Commute
5 hr/w 107 Household Chores 9
hr/w 98 Eating
9 hr/w 89 Average Work Week
46 hr/w 43
Total Time for everything else left in your life
which matters to you Approx 43 hours
Parenting your child, brushing your teeth,
talking with your wife, grocery shopping, reading
a book, religious activities, learning French.
Happiness in life basically boils down to two
things, Happiness in Love and Happiness in Work.
-S. Freud (Paraphrased)
American Time Use Survey http//www.bls.gov/tus/
3
Finding JobsMark Your Calendars! Have your
Resumes Business Cards Ready!

• CAREER FAIR
• The Twenty First Annual University of Michigan
  Engineering Career Fair, sponsored by Tau Beta Pi
  (TBP), the National Engineering Honor Society and
  the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) will be held
  on Monday, September 26, 2005 and Tuesday,
  September 27, 2005 from 1000 a.m. to 400 p.m.
• Be an internet stalker and see what companies you
  are interested in ahead of time!
• http//www.umich.edu/engincf
• UofM CAREER Center
• Must submit resume in fall, then if there is a
  specific job you are interested in you must
  re-submit- applying for that specific job about 3
  weeks before the interviews/recruiters for that
  company are visiting campus.
• IMHO Waste of time, except for following up on
  companies you like from Career Fair.
• CONFERENCES
• 10 business cards e-mail addresses
• Informational interviewing.
• RADLAB
• Professors/ Advisors
• Job Listings E-mail (IE, Rebeiz)
• Job Board Announcement
• Note This is industry-focused, academia is quite
  different- and not something I really know
  anything useful about.

4
Timing your Job SearchWhen do people get job
offers?
Number of Job Offers received Per month. From
the RadLab Salary Survey.
Companies seem to want to make offers between 6-3
months before you can start. They dont really
plan farther ahead than that, and less than 3
months is hard to make happen.
5
National EE MS PhD New-Graduate Hires
Many More Job Offers reported in April-September
than in Oct-March
Source NACE quarterly Reports
6
Interviews Suck!

• There are many types of Interviews, and you need
  to learn to be good at each.
• Traditional
• Behavioral
• Telephone Interviews
• Technical
• BrainTeasers
• Selection Vs. Screening
• For Sample Questions for Traditional and
  Behavioral Interviews,
• Review STAR Technique, Behavioral Traditional
  Interviewing Strategies
• See http//www.quintcareers.com/job_interviews.ht
  ml

7
Dealing With Offers
Qs Who decides whether to make you an offer? How
do they decide how much money to offer? And who
can you negotiate with? As The person who will
be your direct manager decides whether to make
you a job offer or not. This manager tells the HR
people to put together a job offer package. The
HR people decide what amount to offer based on a
spreadsheet calculation with your degree,
experience, cost of living in the area and
comparisons of what other companies in the
industry are paying, and what other people in the
company itself who are of the same grade (IE
Engineer level 7) are making they get an idea of
what the JOB IN PLACE costs. Essentially the
HR people are asking themselves How much would
it cost to hire someone else to do the same
job? From this information, they create a
range approximately 10k wide- and they make an
offer somewhere in that range. They will not
deviate from that range, but with good
negotiating you can get your offer to be near the
top. They will never tell you the range, and they
may not have clearly defined edges- but it exists
and they have an idea of what it is before they
make you your first offer.
8
Negotiating 101
Q What Sort of a Salary Are You Expecting? DO
NOT ANSWER- A1 I think that is a little
premature. I dont even know the job yet. A2
Competitive A3 You really are in a much
better position to know than I am. What do you
think? A4 I will consider any reasonable
offer.
Once they give you an initial offer, with good
negotiating you can probably push it up 3-5k.
QWhy? A Why waste bait on a fish that is
already in the boat?

• 3 Possible answers to any job offer.
• Yes. This ends negotiation.
• No. This ends negotiation.
• Stall. Always say you need time to think about
  it! (3 Weeks)
• I was really hoping to accept this job,
  but this salary is lower than I was expecting. I
  need time to think about it in comparison to what
  I could get elsewhere.

Say that you were expecting something higher. Say
that you were really hoping to be able to accept
their offer because the job is the one that you
want- but that now they are making it hard
because the offer is lower than you were
expecting.
9
READ A BOOK ON HOW TO NEGOTIATE!

• You are already a highly skilled engineer, with
  thousands of hours of training under you belt.
  But, your negotiating skills are probably pretty
  weak. Investing just a few hours in developing
  this skill will pay off in THOUSANDS of dollars
  in annual salary.
• I recommend the following book for a short and
  sweet introduction. It can be read in one
  evening, its a 5-star book on Amazon.com, and
  used copies are available for only 0.67.
• How to Outnegotiate Anyone (Even a Car Dealer!)
  (Paperback)by Leo Reilly It is less than 100
  pages, and takes most people less than 4 hours to
  read.

10
Comparing Apples and Oranges

• The 7 most important factors in evaluating Job
  Offers
• Job Content (30) Is this work interesting to
  me?
• Your Boss (20) Can I work and get along with
  this person?
• Salary and Benefits (15) You like those,
  right?
• Your Co-Workers (10) Will I fit in with the
  corporate culture?
• Typical Work Week (10) Is travel required? Can
  I pursue my other interests?
• Location (10) Do you like the region you will
  be living in?
• Organization Flexibility (5) How with this job
  affect my lifestyle?

Stolen Fromwww.jobweb.com/Resources/Library/Care
er_Pursuit/evaluating_jon_75_01.htm
11
How do I know which job offer is best?
Practically, this is not a quantitative problem-
but this IS a useful way of looking at things
sometimes.
Theoretically speaking, all your job offers Will
form a bell-curve of desirability or value
DDesirability, aj is weighting of the factor
(Ajob content 0.3), R0.00 to 1.00 rating of
the Desirability of the offer in that factor
(Ie, Salary offer of 40k 0.01 Salary Offer of
130k0.98)
Therefore, your offers will have a Mean, and a
standard deviation. Unfortunately, you cant
calculate those until you have at least 3-4
offers.
Your responsibility to yourself is to choose the
one that is FOR YOU the best you can get!
12
Your Job Offer distributions

• Your first offer is always your current best
  offer
• What are the odds that my NEXT offer will be the
  best offer? P1/N
• 50 chance that job offer 2 will be better
  than job offer 1. 33 chance than job offer 3
  will be better than both 1 and 2.
• The value of getting a new offer then is
• Desirability (New Best Job)
  Desirability (Old Best Job) likelihood that
  next offer is a new best job offer.
• As N-gt 8 you get your perfect job, but there
  arent N8 jobs available.
• Each offer takes time and energy (cost) to get.
  In the beginning, job offers are hard to get
  because you arent very good at the job search.
  In the end, job offers will be hard to get
  because you will have already interviewed for all
  the PhD jobs available (consider the situation in
  academia).
• You should STOP SEARCHING when the COST of
  continuing your search is more than the BENEFIT
  of acquiring new offers.

Job offers are a random process. If you turn
down offer X, offer Y will come around in a
couple of months. It may be better, it may be
worse. But you WILL get other offers. That is
the strength of your position, and you must not
fear that no other offer will come. The
AVERAGE RadLab experience is that people get one
job offer for about every 2 months of a job
search. BUT, this ranges from 3 job offers in one
month, to one job offer in 5 months.
13
Consider, a sample Job search
Goal I want a job at the top of possible jobs-
For ME What is the probability (P) that I have
found AT LEAST ONE such job, if I only have N
offers?
90th Percentile M.9
80th ile M0.8
50th ile M0.5
Probability of having at least 1 job offer above
your target percentile. P(1-M)N
N P
1 0.100
2 0.190
3 0.271
4 0.344
5 0.410
6 0.469
7 0.522
8 0.570
9 0.613
N P
1 0.200
2 0.360
3 0.488
4 0.590
5 0.672
6 0.738
7 0.790
8 0.832
9 0.866
N P
1 0.500
2 0.750
3 0.875
4 0.938
5 0.969
6 0.984
7 0.992
8 0.996
9 0.998
14
Salaries for EE Graduates
Georgia Tech Georgia Tech Georgia Tech MIT MIT MIT UofM UofM UofM Rad Lab
Bach Masters PhD Bach Masters PhD Bach Mast PhD PhD
Low 45000 60250 45000 55000 56000 71000 ?? ?? ?? 70000
Median 55000 64800 80400 55375 69750 92930 53208 62111 73250 86367
High 61000 100000 115000 58000 80000 130000 ?? ?? ?? 103000

Avg Bonus Bach 3500 Masters 5000 PhD 6250
National Averages MS 64,416 PhD 80,206
GeorgiaTech http//www.career.gatech.edu/students
/resources/salary_negotiation/ MIT
http//web.mit.edu/career/www/salary/04employer.ht
ml UofM http//career.engin.umich.edu/Annualrepor
t.html National NACE Reports, from
ECRC Stanford http//www.stanford.edu/dept/CDC/su
rveys/0405/engineering.html Carnegie Melon
http//www.studentaffairs.cmu.edu/career/employ/sa
lary/cit.html
15
National avg Salaries for EE Graduates- By Quarter
No Clear Seasonal trend in Salaries. SOURCE NACE
16
UofM Average EECS Salaries
17
MIT PhD, Masters, and Bachelors
18
MIT PhD- Salary Range Distribution
19
MIT Masters Degree Salary Range
20
MIT Bachelors
21
Q Does school rank effect salary?A Consider
the Effect of School Rank on MBA Salary
Very little equivalent data available for
engineers. See MIT, Georgia-Tech, and National
Top-Tier Schools get significantly higher
salaries than the national average.
22
Engineering Rankings
198 Schools grant graduate Engineering Degrees,
the top 10 are 1 MIT 2 Stanford 3 UC
Berkeley 4 GeorgieTech UIUC 6 UofM Ann Arbor 7
USC 8 Caltech 9 CMU 10 Purdue (Source US News
World Reports 2005)
So, MIT does clearly beat the national averages
due to their rank (reputation). But, Georgia-Tech
and UofM (as a whole) do not. Luckily, RadLab
does.
23
IEEE Salary Survey (Your Best Friend)
http//www.ieeeusa.org/careers/salary/
Estimated annual income for this situation, from
base salary and primary sources (base salary plus
any bonuses, commissions, or net self employment
income)
Condition Selected Values Base Adjustment Primary Adjustment
Employer Size Not Specified 0.0 0.0
Specialty Group Other 0.0 0.0
Professional Specialty Other 0.0 0.0
Primary Job Function Unknown 0.0 0.0
Employer Type Private Industry Other than Defense or Utilities 0.0 0.0
Line of Business Not Applicable 0.0 0.0
Highest Degree Held PhD or Equivalent 28.5 30.8
Region Pacific 0.0 0.0
Metro Area Other area in region 0.0 0.0
Professional Experience 0 0.0 0.0
Current Job Experience 0 0.0 0.0
Number of Technical Employees 0 0.0 0.0
Number of Non-Technical Employees 0 0.0 0.0
Responsibility Level Engineer Level 3 7.0 7.2
Base Primary Sources
10th Percentile 60,100.00 62,300.00
20th Percentile 66,200.00 69,300.00
30th Percentile 70,900.00 74,700.00
40th Percentile 75,200.00 79,700.00
Median 77,700.00 82,400.00
60th Percentile 84,200.00 90,300.00
70th Percentile 89,300.00 96,300.00
80th Percentile 95,700.00 103,900.00
90th Percentile 105,400.00 115,500.00
24
Comparing Yourself to other UofM Students

• Average Journal Papers as 1st author1.9
• (Hi5 Lo0) (1.2 not first author)
• Average Conference Papers as 1st author2.8
• (Hi5 Lo0) (1.7 not first author)
• Average GPA for Doctoral Candidate 8.05 (Median
  8.14 Hi8.73 Lo6.90)
• IEEE/IEE publications w/ advisor for 2001
  RADLAB PhD recipients (N11).
• EECS PhD Grads, Fall 04 Winter 05 (N24) I
  think CS and Systems people are running up the
  average GPA.

25
UofM RadLabGradComm Survey
Survey Year (PhDs ONLY) 2001-2002 2004-2005
Students Reporting 5 7
Highest Accepted Base Salary 93000 103000
Average Accepted Base Salary (Excl. Start Bonus) 88800 86367
Lowest Accepted Base Salary 84000 70000
Standard Deviation 3421 14508
Average Number of Offers 2.6 3.0
Max Number of Offers 5 6
Average Std Dev in offers received by one student 5 6

• This means, any given student receiving multiple
  offers, what is the standard
• deviation of the multiple offers received by
  that single student?

26
Which are better, California Oranges, or Florida
Oranges?
Use online cost of living calculation
comparisons to compare your Effective Salary in
Job 1 in City A to Job 2 in City B
If you earned 80,000 in Ann Arbor Michigan, How
much would you need to earn how much to have the
same standard of living in other cities?
Miami, FL 76,882
Albany, NY 79,174
Ann Arbor, MI 80,000
Boston, MA 101,000
Santa Clara CA 104,595
Examples from http//www.homefair.com/homefair/c
alc/salcalc.html
27
Greed, Fear, And LazinessEmbrace your Vices
The fundamental principles behind all
economics Greed- The desire to receive maximum
possible reward for a given investment/risk/or
effort Fear- The desire that for a given return,
you wish the minimum risk/uncertainty I add
Laziness, Laziness- The desire that for a given
reward, you would prefer to make the smallest
possible investment/risk/ or effort Laziness is
just the inverse of greed, or greed stated
another way.
28
A Closer Look atGreed, Fear, and Sloth
Greed- When choosing between two similar jobs,
choose the one paying more money. Two
similar jobs, each requiring about 45 hours of
work a week. One for company pays 80k, the other
pays 85k. Choose the 85k
job! Fear- When choosing between two otherwise
roughly equivalent options, choose the one with
less risk. 10k starting bonus, or 10k
value in stock options.
Choose the starting bonus! Choosing
between one job offering a starting salary of
88k, and one which offers 76-90k, take the
88k! Sloth- When choosing between two jobs with
similar rewards, choose the one requiring less
time investment. Two similar jobs, each
paying about 90k. At one company, everyone works
42.5 hours a week. At the other, everyone works
52.5 hours per week Choose the
42.5 job!
29
Real-World Examples

• GREED- Obvious
• FEAR- Company A offers 95k/year. Company B
  offers 90k/year, but says that There is no
  limit to how much you can earn here. Just come
  and prove yourself, and you will get raises.
  Choose company A. Do you believe that if you
  were a high performer at company A, that you
  would NOT get raises?
• SLOTH- Defense industry company pays 90k (42.5
  hours/week). Computer industry company pays 98k
  (52.5 hours/week). Choose the defense job. The
  other only pays 9 more money, for 24 more work.

Remember Greed is what allows you to feed your
family, Fear is what allows you to protect your
family, and Sloth is what allows you to share
your life (spend time) with your family.
30
Comparing Salary VS Signing Bonus.
The Annuity Formula

• Choosing between salary or starting bonus,
  consider the following
• To compare them, consider if you took the
  starting bonus- and invested it in a stock market
  index fund (r10 return) then took annual
  dividends out of it over the period of your
  career (n25 years).
• That annuity will pay out an annual value that
  has an equivalent affect on your salary would be.

Rule of Thumb 100 in annual Salary1,000
Signing bonus
http//www.moneychimp.com/calculator/annuity_calcu
lator.htm
31
The value today, of money tomorrow (IE Vesting
Bonuss)

• For calculating the value of a retirement plan,
  or a signing bonus that needs 5 years to Vest.
• The current value (Present Value, PV) is related
  to how much money you will get in the future (FV)
  in year n, given an equivalent-risk rate r.

• Note, picking the right r is quite complex-
  This is why finance majors go to college. But,
  here are some rules of thumb
• EXTREMELY LOW RISK Use the r of US Treasury
  Bill/Note for a similar time period (3.4 for 6
  months, 5.3 for 30 years)
• LOW RISK Use the AAA Bond Rate (4.5 for 5
  years, 5 for 10 years)
• MODERATE RISK the historic average stock market
  return, 10.5
• HIGH RISK use the historic average stock market
  return for small-companies, 17.5

http//www.moneychimp.com/calculator/present_value
_calculator.htm
32
Valuing Stock Option

• How much are my stock options, which vest in 5
  years, worth? Should I get a signing bonus
  instead?
• Learn the Black-Scholes Option pricing Model.
  ?

http//www.margrabe.com/OptionPricing.html

• Rule of Thumb Math is hard. Look up what other
  people are paying for it. Thats what it is worth!

33
Stock Option Value II
Look Up Price of CALL OPTIONS on one of the
many market-quote sites. http//www.schaeffersrese
arch.com/streetools/options/option_montage.aspx
Last Net Change Change Open Prev Close High Low Bid Ask Volume
28.23 -0.07 -0.25 28.21 28.30 28.32 28.00 28.30 28.30 36613900
Jan 2008 Jan 2008 Jan 2008

Probably Your stock options will be Call
options, with a strike price equal to the stock
value on the day that you start work. To find
out what they are worth, find out when they
vest (you can sell them), find the quote for
option prices set for that time range, find the
right strike price then see what the last
value was for the call options.
34
Medical Insurance, Dental Insurance, and the
Company Gym

• These really dont matter. All companies have
  Medical, Dental, etc insurance.
• And although some are better or worse than
  others, it takes a LOT of work to figure out
  which is better for you, and even then- the
  difference is small. Ex, good health insurance is
  worth about 1750 per year, bad ones are worth
  1250.
• Exception Gymnasium with pool on-site at work,
  or great free cafeteria on-site. This might make
  your life happier, and is worth more than the .

35
But, I still cant decide!

• The Indifference Theorem
• If, after all is said and done- you are having
  a very hard time deciding whether you should
  accept job A with traits X,Y and Z. or job B with
  traits L,M, and N. It probably doesnt matter
  which you choose. If one choice was clearly going
  to make you happier, you dont have trouble
  deciding.
• If you are REALLY having trouble deciding, it is
  because they are of similar overall value.
  Neither one will probably make you much happier
  than the other.
• Example Job A has a better location more than
  Job B, but Job B offers more time off which I
  enjoy a lot. If you cant decide, it is
  probably because those are of about equal benefit
  (value) to you.

36
Earnings Years After Graduation
37
Im rich, and yet- I feel broke.
Single, Earning 80K, Living in Greater Metro
Detroit Mi

• The average household income in the US is
  30,000.
• I know a family of 4 that lives on 12,000 per
  year.
• Why do I feel so poor?
• The average american pays just over 50 of his
  income in taxes. Federal Income, Social
  Security, State Income, Property/Schools Tax, and
  then Sales tax on whatever is left

Base Salary Base Salary 80,000
Federal Income Tax -28 -22,400
Social Security -7.5 -6,000
Michigan Income Tax -4 -3,200
Mortgage-160k Home -15k/yr -15,000
Taxes Plus Housing Taxes Plus Housing -46,700
Saving (retirement, kids college, rainy day) -10 -8,000
Spendable income (Car, Clothes Food) Spendable income (Car, Clothes Food) 25,300
Median Home Costs www.realtor.org/research.nsf/p
ages/MetroPrice Mortgage Calculator www.bankrate.c
om/gookeyword/calculators/mortgages.asp
As a rough rule of thumb, most home buyers
purchase houses that cost between 1 1/2 and 2 1/2
times their annual income. OR- 25-30 of
take-home salary (after taxes)
38
Ponderings on what that means
A Small shift in earnings can have a large
shift in your life. Earning 91.2k instead of
80k allows you to save 16k (after taxes),
instead of 8k. This doubles your savings, and
allows you to retire at age 58 instead of
65 Math 8k annuity, 10.5 interest, 35 years.
Final Value 2.6M -OR- 16k annuity, 10.5
interest, 28 years. Final Value 2.6M

• Your home is your single largest investment. You
  save 2x as much in your home each year than
  anywhere else.
• Renting is stupid if you will be in the same
  place for more than 5 years.
• In the last 5 years, nationally homes have
  appreciated 49.67 8.4 annually. But location
  makes a huge difference. California 5-yr avg
  102, in Texas- 24. (Dow Jones 10)