 All right, welcome everyone to our panel about first jobs beyond academia. I'm Emily Pace. I'm the principal linguist with a company called Expert System USA. And I'm one of the LCL organizers. I will be the moderator for today as well. So we are going to be talking about getting that first job after you get your degree in linguistics. This is always a very popular question that students have because it feels like there can be so much more that goes into that first job search. We have three wonderful panelists with us today. We have Mark Norris from Grammarly. We have Sophia Chan from ETS Canada, and we have Tripp Maloney from InVib Labs. So what we'll start with is some panelists introductions, move on to some questions, and then as always with our career panels at the end, we will have plenty of time for questions from the audience. Please do feel free to chime in in the chat and to make that another interactive piece of this program as well. All right, so Mark, would you mind starting off and introducing yourself? Sure, hi everyone. Like Emily said, I am an analytical, well, she said I'm at Grammarly. I'm an analytical linguist. That's my job title. I've actually only been there now for about three and a half months. And I previously was on a contract at Amazon with the job title language data engineer. And I did all of this after leaving an academic career after teaching at OU for five years. Thanks, Mark. Sophia, would you like to introduce yourself? Hi everyone. My name is Sophia and I am at ETS Canada, working as an assistant research engineer. And this is my first job ever actually. I started around seven months ago. My, yeah, first full-time thing I have job searching during the pandemic, of course. So I'm super excited to be here. Thank you so much, Sophia and Tripp. All right, thanks Emily. Hey everybody, I'm Tripp Maloney. I am a senior analyst at Invibe Labs. I was fortunate enough to be able to evade the pandemic job search. I started in September, 2019. This was also my first job after school, after graduating with a MA in language and communication from Georgetown. And I've just kind of been holding that down for almost getting close to two years now. Good, so we'll get to hear the pandemic perspective and the non-pandemic perspective for hunting for that job. Hopefully one day it will be over and we will be back to that regular process. So I wanna start with a question for all of you. How did you find that first job after graduating with your linguistics degree? What sites were you using? Where did you hear about the opportunity that you had? And sort of what was that process like? And I'll leave it to any of you to take that question first. Tripp, why don't you go ahead? Sure. Yeah. I know for me it was very much a, yeah, very much a web-based idea, looking a lot at like linguist lists, paying very close attention to listservs that I was a part of, looking at job postings that came out from that. And actually the way my route to Invibe was very much related to that being on the Georgetown linguistics listserv and finding while I was on a camping trip that, hey, there's this position in Invibe showing up. And so scrambling to just like grab a resume I happened to have on my phone and submitting it via that way. It's certainly not what I would recommend, although it did end up working, but that was very much sort of the process of like looking through LinkedIn, looking through people that I was able to meet in grad school and just kind of understanding the lay of the land and figuring out where I can like plug in as a linguist. And yeah, folks, those are the three primary things, listservs, LinkedIn itself and a linguist list, all of those I got interviews through. And was that listserv, was that your department listserv or was that multiple different ones? I was on a couple of them, the stuff that was showing up most, that was most relevant was a linguistics department listserv. Okay. Sophia, why don't you, or Mark, I just see you unmuted yourself, go ahead. Yeah, I'll go next. So just to build on what Tripp said, the other thing that can be really helpful in trying to find your first job is to know what titles to be looking for. And so a good way to dig into that is to try to talk to as many people you know that studied linguistics and keeping track of what the job titles are. And also even people that you don't know just looking for people with linguistics degrees on LinkedIn can help you understand what job titles are available to me. And the tricky thing about this is that they're not translatable across companies necessarily. So you really have to kind of get to know, I mean, I was job searching for 13 months. So I kind of started to get to know, oh, at this company, the job is called this. And at this company, the job is called this. And you sort of start to piece together what those titles are. So I even like built, started building a spreadsheet of like, what are the job titles I need to be looking for? Because I just couldn't remember all of them. Yeah, Christine, I'm sorry, 13 months, but my case is sort of special. So anyway. I totally agree with like how job titles are different at different places. And I think I met a lot of people who, I was in Seattle when I was job searching. I met a lot of people who worked for Amazon. And it seems like even within Amazon, there's like a lot of different, or any big company it seems like within different teams, they're, even if for the same title, the way the role is defined is a little bit different. And then on those teams, like, I think I heard, like I saw Emily say through Slack, also that like, it really depends on like, the people you meet, like how much they know about linguistics. I think some of the language engineering roles were posted, like, I feel like they're posted by managers by like who may or may not have a linguistics degree or may or may not have interacted with linguists within their organization. So I think, I guess like, like, I guess meeting the people who, meeting linguists who may, maybe they happen to know someone on a team who can give you more information about what this team is like, but also like not being disheartened if people don't get back to you because it's just like the, feel the changing like so quickly that new jobs are being posted every day and people are learning more and more about linguistics every day. So there are lots of, I think like as I was applying, I kept on seeing new roles pop up and like just like keep on plugging away at it, I guess. And Sophia, how did you hear about the job that you have now? Where did you see that? I forgot about that. That's an additional question. I believe that I was looking up linguistics. Probably I think I stumbled upon the ETS website somehow by looking for, I think it was on LinkedIn that I found the job. I think I was just going through a lot of job postings. So on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn, LinkedIn is a great resource. We've had some sessions throughout LCL on resumes and LinkedIn so definitely work on that and have that if you don't already have one. I wanna pick up on something that Mark said that was echoed in the chat, 13 months. And I'd like to talk to all of you a little bit about just how long your job process took and sort of how you managed it from a logistics perspective and from an emotional perspective as well. One of the questions we've gotten a lot from our attendees so far is, when do I start my job search? If I wanna have a job, when I finish my degree, when do I start looking? So I would love to hear from all of you on that. I think if I, I'll just start here. I think it sort of depends on how you're defining job search, okay? So if you're talking about applying submitting applications for things, I think it's wise to be starting that like four to six months before you're ready to be done. But one of the things that caused my job search to take a really long time is that I didn't really even put a toe in the water until I had moved from Oklahoma to where I'm based now in San Francisco. I'm talking not even interviewing people I know, not even having these informational interviews to figure out what's out there, to figure out what are the terms that I know from linguistics that are in use in industry, but they're called something else. Like all of these important things that are relevant for interviewing and for tailoring your resume, those sorts of conversations, that I think start ASAP. I mean, ask people if they'll just talk to you about what they do at work for 30 minutes. And the more you let that information wash over you, the more it will start to feel familiar and comfortable. And I think, yeah, so like, I think that you can sort of start right away certainly if you think of the job search as not only like I'm submitting applications, but also I'm getting comfortable talking about these concepts and talking about how my linguistics is relevant for whatever this job is. That's a great piece of advice to start early. And a good thing about everybody who's here at LCL or watching these videos at home later, you are now part of that process. Tripp, Sophia, thoughts to add here? Definitely some things I would like to echo of like, one, just gaining information, the application process as a learning process, I really can't agree with that more. That that's definitely how it worked for me. For me, it was, I was very fortunate just kind of ending up with a windfall sort of opportunity. My job search didn't really last all that long, trying to remember specifically I came in for an in-person interview back when those were a thing in July after graduating in April and having started really looking around more intensely, I would say starting in February. So it was about a five-month process for me, but two of those months really did overlap pretty hard with me finishing up my degree. And yeah, just learning about the process, even if you're, yeah, just getting as much time talking to people as possible, I say it would be very helpful. I'd say like even the interviews where things didn't necessarily go great or I didn't necessarily get a follow-up gave me a good idea of like, okay, here is how ex-firm or this arm of industry in general is talking about things because I really do wanna follow up on something that Sophia mentioned is like as people get a greater familiarity with linguistics, there is this tendency, at least in my line of work, which is market research more specifically, I should have clarified that earlier on. Some of those little bits of linguistic sort of terms or terms that we like to use, stuff like ethnography and deep listening kind of get like co-opted and become something that doesn't necessarily match with your own academic definition of what those are. So it's a very much kind of almost a false friends situation for people who are in translation, but it's in terms of just like interchanging arguments that the more you do it, the more you know it, the less likely you are to end up saying that, oh yes, I can do ethnography and they have a completely different image in their head from what you were talking about. I wanna build on this question a little bit with I think a slight variant, which is how many interviews you went through before getting your offer, either for the job that you have now or if there were other jobs that you interviewed for and you went along in the process. We have a lot of curiosity about how long those interview loops are and how many commitments you'll have. Sophia, would you wanna start with this one? Sure. I think my job searching began kind of like when I I started my masters in September of 2019 and I started looking, I think around probably October, November, December. It's kind of blurry now, but sometime like shortly, very shortly after I started school. And I kept, I applied throughout the year and it was kind of a special case because it was an internship, but it took me until I probably went, I did like maybe, I would say like at least 10 or 20 interviews during that time, if not more and like talking to people and sending out a tons of job postings I never heard back from. And then I actually received my offer for an internship in March of the following year. And it was in a position that I actually initially got rejected for. And then they gave me feedback on my interview process, which was very helpful, but then they later said that the candidate had dropped out. So I got to fill their spot, which was super lucky for me. But then like as a pandemic role then I started getting, the interviews that I had scheduled began to be dropped because people didn't have funding for the positions that I was applying for. They said that they were no longer hiring. So that was, I think like, it felt like a lot of my classmates were going through the same thing. Like people who would have gotten jobs by now, usually like in other years just like didn't hear back for a long while. But like, I think now I'm seeing like people like get into positions that they wanted to get into. But then after my internship, I had like a three months where I was applying probably like, I was like a full-time job supplier. So I was applying to every single day like trying to send out resumes every single day. And I still didn't get any job. And it was like I had applied like at the end of my internship to my current company and they were the only ones who got back to me out of every job that I applied to that summer. Yeah. I think that's a feeling that in a process that many of us have gone through of not hearing back. Mark and Tripp, anything to add here? I can definitely add in the sort of prospects of yeah, the sort of different stages of frankly like rejection and which are sort of progressively more helpful. Like yeah, one is you just kind of send a resume out into the ether and you just don't hear anything back. And sometimes it's difficult to even tell us like was there anything wrong with this resume or was this just circumstantially not like the kind of job that was gonna be optimized for anyway. And I think yeah, I mentioned I think when I was talking earlier anytime that you actually are like talking to somebody I would say those are the times when you're really doing a lot of learning and getting a lot of understanding. Even if it's there were a couple of things that I applied to that I was really not a hundred percent interested in but at least just kind of developing the skills of talking to people, hearing from, okay, here's what ex firm is doing. Here's how they're talking about these skills. Here's how I can kind of translate my linguistics background into that depending on whether or not that's something they're particularly familiar with. And yeah, just sort of anything past any feedback that you can get is good feedback even if you're just talking to peers whether it's fellow linguists, other people in your life who aren't linguists sometimes that's just as important to say does this make sense to you? Does this track for you? Or does this look like a paper that I wrote as opposed to a personal statement that's meant to be read by somebody who doesn't have the same background as me? Yeah, I'm not sure how many, I mean, I totally agree with everything. Sophie and Tripp have said so far. I'm not sure how many I had ultimately. I think my issue was people just not really getting in touch with me at all. And there was a lot of silence and when you got to sort of pay attention to what sort of appetite you have for this when I was a full-time job supplier I didn't apply every day because I could not especially after months and months and months I couldn't handle it. So once a week I would take a day and figure out what are the jobs that are open and I would apply for those jobs. And the other days I would do other things. Sometimes that was development. Sometimes that was just trying to be happy because job searching sucks. So what can I control? That's kind of how I tried to have the mindset. I mean, ultimately I think I had maybe like interviews with like four or five different companies before I ended up getting my contract offer from Amazon and the interview experience for contract job offers and full-time job offers is so different for contract jobs you'll often have like I had one one-hour interview that was a little bit technical and a little bit sort of just conversational. And that was all then I was offered the position whereas for my offer at Grammarly the whole process unfolded over a period of I wanna say six to eight weeks. So and there were multiple, multiple interviews that happened during for that whole process. And a couple of people said this I have been second choice too. I've been second choice and it's hard not to be disappointed because you really want that job but I was in a headspace at that time where it was like this means I can get a job. This means I'm hireable. This just didn't happen to work out but I just have to keep giving myself those opportunities and hoping that then I'm gonna get one that bends my way. So I wanna pick up on a theme that a few of you have touched on and that someone's brought up in the chat as well which is managing that frustration when you go through a whole process and you don't hear anything. You know it's one thing to apply for a job and not hear back to that initial application but you know how do you manage sort of individually and personally that process of putting in so much time and energy and then a no or nothing. I think it really helps to connect with people who are going through the same thing. Like I think just like yeah one conversation with people who have been through the same thing or may not going through right now but people who can stay like, I think when I was in my, I had heard a lot of rejection and wasn't hearing anything back. I reached out to like group of linguists in tech and they were a group of people who had graduated from UW before me and they had gone through the similar processes and like we're now working and they were just things like do you wanna sit down and have a coffee with me and like to talk a little bit about or I can help you with your, I can help you with your like touching up your resume just a little interactions like that really helped me pull through I think. Yeah, as I sort of touched on in my previous answer there were, I mean, just to be completely frank there were months during my job search that where I was pretty unhappy about how it was going and what really worked for me was trying to remember every moment that there was a disappointment how much of this was out of my control and it's a thing that we say a lot but for the job search especially like if nobody calls you it doesn't mean you're not qualified and I'm sorry that that's true like it sucks that that's true but it is true. You have recruiters who are sort of the first gatekeeper towards passing your resume on and sometimes the job description doesn't exactly match what they're looking for or sometimes the job posting is still on LinkedIn but they actually already have somebody who's negotiating and you don't know that or there's so much that you really can't control and like when you're second place like in my case someone just happened to have more experience than me they really liked me but they had to go with the person who had more experience and what can I do about that? The answer is nothing. So I really whatever you need to do as we're all sort of individuals to accept that there's so much in the job search that's out of your control and what you can control is talking to people to get more experience talking about these topics stealing language from people's LinkedIn's and resumes to make your sound better and putting in those job applications and that's sort of the end of the list of what you can do yourself. I also wanna quickly echo Sophie's point about making friends who are going through this too. I randomly this woman on LinkedIn just randomly added me and then she started messaging me asking me about how my job search was going and it sort of developed into this thing where once a week we were sort of checking in with each other and saying how's it going and whatever else and also those can be great opportunities for networking. So then ultimately there was a contractor position available like Grammarly and I was able to pass her resume to the recruiter for that and she got hired. So now I'm actually working with her which is cool too and it's just been nice to sort of support each other this whole way and then you sort of, yeah that is a good way to kind of stay connected with people. I wanna switch gears just a little bit to talk about the level of degrees that everybody has and sort of how that influences your process. So we have Mark who has a PhD, we have Terp and Sophia who have master's degrees and we all know that sometimes a job ad will say this degree required or this degree preferred. So sort of what was your experience like navigating through that process with the degree that you have? I guess I'll take a stab at this one first. I know that in some cases, I think there were some applications that were a little bit more vague on like what was required particularly I think some in the more technical space where it's just like asking more about competencies as opposed to degrees. I actually did end up applying for an interview for a couple of computational linguistics focused jobs even though that's not like on the name of my degree. It's just something that I was able to list as a skill because I did sort of like a secret specialization in it during my last couple of semesters of just doing a lot of like Python and LP work. And so that can kind of work in some spaces. I do think in some places it really, I think it does depend on the field that you're in whether or not the, which acronym you're carrying as a suffix is going to really be a hard barrier or not. I can't really speak with any confidence about like what opportunities are available for you if you have a bachelor's, but I will say for masters that did definitely did seem like it was opening up the field a good bit more and then you would also see and I'm sure Mark can speak more to this of like positions where it's like a PhD or industry experience and those start to become a little bit more interchangeable which I know since we're talking about like first jobs that sometimes something can be a little bit disheartening but I do think one thing that I would say about that is you can see something like, oh, I really want to aim for that. So just getting in the door somewhere and just putting a little bit of putting some time in and sort of developing towards that is absolutely like a viable option to take. I work with people who have that sort of same position. I have to work for kind of two people at once. One of them is PhD who with three years of industry experience, the other one is has the same degree as me with 10 years of industry experience. So there's just very much kind of an exchange rate of like getting in, getting some work done not at the same firm but just like gaining that sort of experience. Yeah, I think that the point about industry experience versus having a higher degree and sort of moving up that way, I think is a really good thing to underscore these jobs that often the sort of flashier jobs like language engineer and analytical linguists and those kinds of things that the big companies, a lot of times they really are looking for people who have PhDs or like an MA that's specifically computationally focused. I think if they don't have industry experience but a thing to keep in mind though as I know several people where you look at their resume and their first role was something at like the annotation level like a machine learning data linguist at Amazon or working with Lionbridge or Appin doing annotation and sort of year after year they kind of are moving themselves up the ladder so to speak and then they're able to get a role like language engineer or analytical linguist. And so if you don't have as much training the sort of plus side is that you're actually more likely to get these annotation jobs because I think a lot of companies are a little bit hesitant to hire people with higher degrees for the annotation jobs because they think they're just going to leave them. So, which is, I mean, it's not because they're the worst jobs in the world I don't think that they're, I was told anyway annotation jobs are there are sort of that's the fact of the matter as I've seen it is that usually people who are working as annotators have bachelors or master's degrees more often than having PhDs. Yeah. I've actually seen that my workplace that a lot of people come in with general linguistics or I think there is we have a producer which is kind of like a, I don't know if this term is used widely but it's like a product manager and we have that it was filled by a person with a PhD in syntax. And so because we work with language data all the time I think it's important to have that sort of understanding and there's also people who started their PhDs but then decided to switch to industry where I work a couple of people who I can think about the top of my head and people who finished did their amazing applied linguistics or different type of linguistics have been involved in projects and they moved into and then after they are in that role involved in the project they have, it seems like they have more flexibility to like move into whatever, go into whatever type of career they feel like they wanna do most. So I guess, yeah, like it's kind of like any way where it seems like there's a lot of places where these types of like organizational skills and like any knowing about language can come in. I wanna switch to a different topic on the job search front, which is about geographic restrictions. So I think all three of you are in a relatively large metropolitan areas and this is always a burning question. Do I have to move to the Bay Area? Do I have to move to Seattle? What are your thoughts on that part of the process? I can go first with this. For me, I was, and I guess I'll also kind of give what's probably the least relevant explanation just because again, pre-pandemic and I think the remote world might be turning this somewhat on its head from what I can tell. But for me, I was definitely restricting my search to at least Eastern Seaboard time zone. I was started applying out of Washington DC, had a pretty good idea that didn't want to remain there but didn't want to go too far just because family and my partner at the time were kind of like east coast bound so I was gonna be sticking with that, which gives you some options but not an incredible number of options. I would say that I was still able to find work related to linguistics in sort of that Dan's DC. I think there was a couple of firms in the Carolinas. Philadelphia area has a lot of market research based stuff. That's where a couple of big firms are. That's where invite is, that's where I am now, Philadelphia but yeah, I would definitely say at the time I was like concerned about like, do I have to move? And even in places that didn't require it where there was still some sort of like flexible position at the time, which of course has changed completely as of last March, I did not want to be in a like a remote situation. So I was trying to think about like, okay, where can I live, where can I be close to work and where can I sort of like remain accountable in that space? And then of course that changed and where my firm used to be a little bit more insistent on, okay, either Bay Area or Philly where the two offices are. Now we're have people in Richmond, Baltimore. And I don't think it's because like anything, particularly about those areas, it's just that's where the applicants came from and they're just able to remain there because it is a remote setting. That's a great point too, Tripp. So Mark and Sophia, if you'd like to also talk a little bit about the geographic side of it and then the remote side of it too, now that that's more of an option for people. I'm originally from Vancouver, Canada. And we, and I, Seattle was my first time leaving the country. And after I went there, it was pretty hard for me to find a job in Seattle. It was like quite competitive there, I think, because of all the people moving there to go into, to find tech jobs. I imagine it's like similar for San Francisco. But the internship that I got with ETS was based in Princeton, but I did it in the first year of my career and I did it in the first year of Princeton, but I did it remotely. And the job I have right now is based in Toronto, but I'm doing it remotely. So it seems like in terms of, yeah, like totally what Tripp said, like everything is just kind of free for all that scheme is like. I was geographically restricted. Oh, go ahead, Emily. I was just gonna say if you could also add in Margaret, you give your answer about what you think the future of remote work might be and I'd like Tripp and Sophia to chime in on that too. So please continue. So I was geographically restricted in my search because one of the main catalysts for my departure from academia was so that my personal life could be a priority. And for me, that meant staying in San Francisco. And which like, I mean, you know, I was like, of course there'll be one million jobs. Well, the problem is there were two million people trying to get those jobs. So it was not as straightforward as I thought it would be. But I think there are jobs that, certainly now there's so much that's remote, but even before I think there are jobs that require or that are good for linguists in tech that are not based in Seattle or San Francisco. And so I think there is a broader variety than you might have expected. And I certainly would, I mean, my recommendation would be that you search for a job wherever you feel comfortable searching from and then be prepared to move if that comes rather than just moving to San Francisco and assuming that that will be where it pans out just because you wanna be more flexible than that, I think. And a lot of annotation jobs now, especially are just completely remote. You can be wherever to do that work. And so if that's the route that you're going to take, then that's a great option. And then I also think because a lot of language and tech jobs are sort of more on the software side of things, a lot of those roles, I think companies are really seeing that it's fine to be located sort of wherever. I can say that for the future of remote work for at least grammarly, the plan is that will be based sort of wherever we like but with a lot of travel. So we're gonna be in person somewhere between six and 10 weeks maybe per year at one of the hubs that Grammarly maintains will come together for things like quarterly planning for things like project kickoffs where we all wanna be in the same place. But then otherwise we can sort of live wherever we want. There are restrictions for tax reasons but other than that is sort of okay. And I think, I mean, we don't yet know exactly what it's gonna look like because they're still sort of figuring it out. Grammarly was a company who early in the pandemic was saying, no, no, no, we're coming back. We're coming back. This is not gonna be a permanent thing. So it's sort of new for us too. And I think, yeah. So I just think there'll be more opportunities certainly for remote work than there were before. And I'll just say sort of like even outside of the more tech focused world because where I am I'm really mostly doing sociolinguistics in sort of a market research context. One thing that was really interesting about like the onset of COVID was for my work which is more specifically like working in healthcare. It almost didn't really notice right from the outset. I mean, we started working from home but there's very, very little about like what you do in a market research context that really necessarily involves like being on site, being in person. I mean, the closest client contacts you normally get are either everybody coming to a board meeting or as we do now just having a teams meeting or a Zoom meeting depending on how they feel about like net sack and stuff like that. And I will say from seeing how clients have absolutely sort of embraced the work from home aspect of things other than a few people. It seems like the general culture even outside of necessarily the tech world in these more remote able jobs there isn't a particularly strong push back towards meeting in person. I know my company's currently like talking about maybe meeting up on an infrequent basis maybe like even once a week or less if you're not actually in the Philly area where there's the still benefits to having some sort of in-person aspect of the work but it's getting easier and easier to I think have people who are going to be 100% remote. I know one of our tech people we just hired lives in Indiana who works with everybody else in I think Costa Mesa, California and other times on difference that's been a really easy sort of transition in. So yeah, I would say not even in the tech world there does seem to be this push from that I'm seeing towards enjoying the benefits that remote work gives. So I actually do wanna add in one more thing before we sort of finish up this search part of it which is what did you learn during the process for finding your first job that will affect how you search for your next job? And sort of what was your biggest takeaway and what might you do differently next time? I would say search optimization was definitely a learning process and being in industry is only helping that I think for whatever future job searches I make take part and I have a much better idea of what kind of things to potentially look for. Where I'm working is currently like a little bit more like explicitly linguistic in nature like our CEO is specifically interested in linguists but I'm still able to see when we're interfacing with clients like, okay what do we have to translate this into in order for them to understand? So understanding like, okay there is absolutely linguistic component to research design there's a linguistic component to IDI moderation, things like that that I had absolutely no idea what they were before I started in my line of work were the kind of things where I have something of a skill set for now that I'm just becoming more and more aware of and like, okay these are the things in a job description that I used to have no idea what they were and now I not only know what they are but I actually have some skills that are somewhat applicable to them. So that's the first thing is coming to mind to me I'm sure there's more nuance to take but the first thing when you say is like oh what are you learning? It's like, oh absolutely I'm learning the lexicon is what I'd say is the first thing is coming to mind. Sophia Mark any tips on what you learned in that first round? I really like the way that you put that trip like lexicon is like learning just like learning the words that people use or like what's even what even exists. But I think I think I've met that my first time around that I was very much like anyone I'll apply to all jobs in any job. And now I actually think that I would be more focused on finding first like a, I want to say that like I would be more focused on tailoring my search but that's also difficult because like Mark said in the very beginning you don't really know what these jobs are about until you apply to them. But I think I would be more okay with like just talking on the phone with recruiters like finding out more about the position before actually diving into the interview to see if it's a good fit for me. Cause I know now that like some jobs are just I was trying to make things I was trying to make things work because I wanted a job but I guess sometimes even the recruiters or the people interviewing me could see that I was just applying for the job because I wanted the job. I kind of want to answer a slightly different question which is if I could try to get my first job again what would I do differently? Because now that once you get your first job I mean, once you get your first job then all of a sudden everyone is significantly more interested in you because you have you have an industry job on your resume. And so they're like, oh, this person is hireable and desirable by at least some people in the industry. So I think just to echo something I said earlier you just that networking is really about having quick conversations with people and asking them, please tell me about what you do at work. And you don't have to say like, oh, hello, I am so and so and I am a great candidate or whatever you just get to know people and you listen to how they talk about their job. And over time you will start to be like, wow I actually can talk about this now and I can talk about this. And I do understand how machine learning models work from in the broad strokes or these kinds of things where at the beginning of your job search you sort of had no idea and it's really hard to Google this stuff. I mean, I feel like we as linguists are very used to having good results when we Google things about linguistics because it's mostly reasonable but when you start Googling these kind of tech terms you just have such a broad range of pedagogical abilities and some of the stuff you find can be just completely impenetrable. So the way to break through that is to have conversations with people and I really wish I would have started that so much earlier so that I would have been better prepared for my interviews. I really like Sophia's point about kind of not applying for everything. You know, I did cast a wide net. I mean, I applied for UX design stuff and like taxonomy positions. The near job that I got was as a taxonomist for eBay. And those I think were right for me but there were times when I was even considering hardcore data science and thinking that linguistics was applicable for that and to an extent it is but realizing like I actually don't want to manipulate data sets full of numbers all day. And that's I'd rather have there be language data and so I did realize like maybe I don't want to apply for everything. And I think that's true and kind of an important thing to remind yourself when you are in the thick of like, God, am I ever gonna get hired? This to be like, I have to believe that I will and I have to believe that it's okay for me to not apply for something if I think I wouldn't like it. That is an okay choice to make. Thank you for sharing all of those things that you learned. Definitely I think the takeaway here is that there will be so much of a learning curve in applying for your first job throughout that process and then into your next one and even your next one. You know, your career path will be a continual learning curve of where you wanna be and who you wanna work with and how you find those jobs and all of that stuff. So we'll switch now a little bit too. Okay, so you've gone through your interview process, you've gotten an offer and now you are negotiating for it. You are trying to figure out how your time should be compensated. So I'm wondering a little bit about your experiences there. You know, did you sort of have an offer from the company and that was the offer and you took it or you tried to negotiate and your negotiation worked or maybe it didn't work. I think we have a lot of anxiety in that first job about what am I worse in this economy that we exist in and how do I make sure I have enough salary to pay my rent but I also really need a job. So I'd love to talk a little bit about that part of the process with whoever would like to go first. I'll go first this time if that's okay. So one piece of advice, someone with more industry experience gave me that I'll say off the bat is when they give you a number, you don't give any positive evaluative judgments about the number, even if you think it's great, you say, okay, thank you, that's interesting or something like that. Because if early in the interview process they ask you for a range, do whatever you can to not give them a number. Just say, well, I've done my research and I expect to be competitively compensated, whatever. It's really a strange cat and mouse game and but the key thing is that for most jobs, whatever they give you is not what they're able to give you and so if you just kind of have that in mind, that's I think the right approach. I will say for my contract job, I tried to negotiate and was told that amount is fixed by Amazon. So that was sort of like slam door for my Grammarly position, I ended up getting two offers. I'm sorry, it's just how it played out that I had an offer for a full-time position at Amazon at like the same time as Grammarly, which is sort of the ideal scenario for negotiating and I know that we can all think of for negotiating comparing the how much money they're paying you and whatever else and okay, if one is more then you would say, hey, I'm getting more from this company and then you would say, can you bring it up? But a tip that friend of mine gave me during this negotiation process is that you can also use other things like time to your advantage. So it takes time to consider these offers and it takes time to make up your mind. And so for Grammarly, I ultimately said, you know, I have this other offer and I need to like counter and consider it but we can sort of skip all of that. If you can increase my base amount for my Grammarly offer, I'd be happy to sign right away. And so rather than saying, oh, they're paying me more, I was like, listen, I'm gonna drag you through this whole rigmarole or we can just cut through that and sign right away. And that actually worked. So this was a tactic that I had never considered before and that's why I'm sharing that with y'all. But the key thing is you must try, you must ask at least once. Like just even if you're like, this is great, I would do it for this month, I would do it for this much, you should still ask. Yeah. I guess I can go next. Just I'm thinking there were three very different scenarios where I got deep enough into the interview process that compensation started getting discussed. And so each of them were kind of different both in terms of like how it was structured and like who started. So the first one that sort of came my way was a job that was going to be paid on an hourly basis and they basically asked me to like describe the range and start and I unfortunately, since this was my first time, I did actually name that and tried to do some like back of the napkin math because I was thinking in terms of annual and had to like convert that to hourly, which I would recommend that you do that ahead of time if you think that's going to come up because it very much helps to like know what's going on there because I think I both might have not calculated correctly and I think that might have ended up like stopping the conversation altogether. Although I'm really not quite sure because after that point, I really just didn't hear from those that firm again. So it was one of those situations where like there was no negotiation process. I don't know if it was the price negotiation was where things fell through or if it was another aspect of my application, it just kind of happened. The next one was basically there was a fixed price from the interested firm that they named. And frankly, it was a bit of an eye-popping number for me. So I didn't really say anything about it and I was just like, all right. And then I proceeded to bomb the coding interview. So that's just kind of how it ended up going on. Still like the one that got away, but you know, it's fine. I'm very happy with where I am. And where I am, it was more of I think a straight ahead like negotiating process where I kind of finally figured this out where I got offered a number. And I basically, I did not have the benefit of having another like simultaneous iron and the fire with compensation. That's definitely the ideal situation to be in, aim for that. But I was able to talk about saying like, okay, here's what my expenses are here. So I'm gonna have to move up. This is what I think I'm worth with my skill set. And I was able to negotiate the price up about 8% of what they were initially offering. And that did work. And it wasn't like it's the thing where I got like completely hosed out of like, that wasn't like getting my first raise early. It ended up actually working out quite well. So I would definitely echo what Mark said is there is very likely to be room to negotiate. This will vary from by firm, but I don't think it's ever going to be a situation where you're like breaking etiquette to try to negotiate because even firms that are hard and fast are going to have a little bit of explain to do. And they say, yes, this is hard and fast. And I need to explain this by saying, yes, this is what Amazon is doing. It's not in my hands. And yes, it is a very sweaty conversation, Samantha. That's a very good call because that was also one of the scariest moments in my life when I was on the phone of like, I think I'm worth about X more. And I think I poker faced it pretty well. It worked, but man, it's terrifying. So Sofia, anything to add here? I think that my situation was like very like I wish that I had been on this panel before I got my job offer because it was kind of like also an eye-popping number for me, but I think I was the third employee that was hired as part of ETS Canada. So at that point they, I think they had done some like research about like the industry standard in Canada and then adjusted their salary to fit that. So then I did it, it felt like, and because I didn't have any offers, I didn't feel like I had anything like a case. Because I was asking and trying to learn about how to do negotiations and stuff, but people were saying that I should look up like how much people are paid for this job in the area where I'm being hired. And I really couldn't find like, I think the offer that I got was just like slightly above the standard that I saw on Glassdoor. So I kind of, I accepted it and that was it. But I think that it would be a good call to make sure that it's at least meeting whatever people are reporting. Yeah, and one thing, oh, please go ahead, Tripp. Sorry, just one quick thing. I don't want to labor the point for too long. I do also just want to point, I see people mentioning Glassdoor in the chat and like the idea of doing homework beforehand. I will also just sort of echo that sometimes that doesn't necessarily apply to all cases. In my case, since I worked for a pretty small company, the actual like tier position that I was joining at did not really exist prior to myself and somebody else who was hired at the same time. So there wasn't really a Glassdoor review to look at. So in that case, I think you can still do research and have some due diligence going on, but it might not necessarily be married to the specific position that you're looking at. If you're looking at a larger firm, of course you might have more transparency there, but sometimes you do have to, I guess, get a little bit creative in thinking about like, okay, what's this like? What's an equivalent position somewhere else? And try and operate with that as a baseline. Yeah, good point from Tripp here. The Glassdoor is your friend, but it may not give you all of the information that you need and it's just one thing to look at. And we've had some questions here about, what kind of a rough range might people who have linguistics degrees consider to be good versus low? I think especially because of linguists, we tend to have a lot of different job titles. We work in a lot of different industries, not necessarily looking in your specific industry or your firm, but sort of what your general feelings are about that range of something that's too low and where you start to get into a good salary. And I will also add to this question as well that that will very heavily depend on where you live because I think Mark's answer in the Bay Area and Beauty Sophia's answer in Vancouver are very different possibly from what a good salary would be if you live somewhere with a much lower cost of living. So just wanna put out that as well for everybody here today that geography plays a huge role in what is a good salary. I can only speak for the ones that I applied for and a lot of the contract gigs that I was interviewing for were like the mid to high 30 an hour was what I was being quoted for those and people were routinely telling me that is not good. They should be higher than that, but that's what I was seeing. The contract position I ultimately accepted was actually 50 an hour. And so that was, I knew that that was good. And so when they said there's no room to negotiate I was sort of like, well, I already know that this is competitive for this kind of role. So that was okay. I can say for someone having a PhD trying to get a role like language engineer or analytical linguist or those kinds of things total compensation should be above 100. It really should. It should probably even be like 120 is maybe a sort of good middle range. I, my offer was 110 all in and everyone was like, that's ridiculous. That's too low. And so just to give you a sort of sense of where these things are for those, yeah. Yeah, I'm telling you, it's a crazy world people. I'm seeing these reactions in the chat. It's a crazy world. I guess I can hop in with a slightly different perspective coming from like a master's degree where that will kind of... Yeah, I'm prefaced by just sort of repeating the cost of living area where you're at is going to impact this, I feel. And what I was sort of given to expect was I would say probably around 50% of what Mark was describing where I was getting offers and like figuring things out in the iPopper number for me was 80. I can just, yeah, start like put a name to that which for coming out of NMA and a relatively like decent thing, I was like, okay, that seems pretty good. And I was also thinking in terms of just like expenses and how to balance that out. And I would also recommend that people try to at least phrase things in terms of value. Somebody in the chat made a very good point about that. I forget who, but like when you're talking about pay, that's a good way to do it. I would say what I ended up starting with where I am now is, was 60,000 a year and building from there, that's something that you can expect to increase via raises and experience. And I think if I'm counting right, it should end up tracking towards once I have about a PhD's time worth of experience if raises continue, that's going to kind of end up being equivalent. So just try and think about it like plus or minus five years of raises. But yeah, I would say where I am in an urban area that doesn't necessarily have a ridiculously high cost of living and maybe I'm just completely desensitized from having done grad school in DC, which I know is in the Bay Area, but at least on the East Coast, it does seem like it's about as bad as it gets. And Philly is significantly more affordable than that where I've been looking. So. I think I'll jump in here. So the offer that I ended up getting is 130 Canadian, which was very, I was very satisfied with that. Yeah, I was very shocked actually. I didn't expect that much. And then, but I feel like people straight up, like people with bachelor's degrees in computer science, generally, I think in general, it's 100K out of school with a bachelor's. So I feel as though like language working in tech should be compensated in the same way. I wanna take up on a question from the chat here about companies that don't mention anything about salary until the offer point. So at what point do you, or did you bring that up as part of your interview process? I guess, again, I kind of gave a bit of an indication of like my different sort of forays into this where some, it seems like it's a bit different where the first interview I had with one firm, they were talking about compensation right out the gate and whereas my current work did only start really talking about dollar value beyond competitive once we were actually like getting into the offer phase post me having already done sort of like a trial presentation for them. I honestly, I like the idea of that being a bit more transparent, but I just realized that's not necessarily going to be the reality in most places. And I am really not a hundred percent sure about how that applies in the tech world where it might be a little bit more of a focus on those sorts of things and we're talking about I guess a different range of figures. Yeah, I mean, I suppose you could, if you're dealing with a company that's not being forthcoming about this, I suppose that once you get past like the initial screen interview or even with the recruiter, when you get a chance to talk to the recruiter, they're a great person to ask if there is any information about a salary range because it's sort of their job. And so if they're being really cagey about it at that point, then that's where you have to sort of decide like, does this sound like the kind of place that I'm interested in working at? And when you're looking for your first job, it's like impossible to imagine saying no to someone who's interested in you. So I understand why you would kind of want to continue. And then I think ideally, then when you do your future job searches, you're never doing them. When you're unemployed, you're sort of building on your career as you go. And so then it's less of like a high wasted time and more of like a trying to find a good fit for your next role. So it's kind of hard, but ask. And if you're worried about who to ask, ask the recruiting team rather than the hiring team. Okay, so thinking more of transitioning and I'll just make this the last question that I posed and then I have been doing some of the questions from the chat, but we'll go to more audience questions to wrap up. What was the most difficult thing that you had to learn in that transition from school to working in your first job? Whether that was skills or something about the environment or just the overall transition out of academia to industry, what did you find most difficult about transition? First thing that's coming to mind for me are sort of just like very basic logistical things like the fact of it being a 40 hour a week job being different from sort of the more scholastic environment where you're having a few classes and a lot more of like self-directed reading, research, writing kind of on your own. I know for me that was a pretty, ended up being not as bad as I was expecting it to be because I was like, I'm only spending about X amount of time on when I'm in grad school and then moving to a home and it's gonna be like nine to five, there's commute and have to get up earlier. And I would say that was relatively straightforward to get into the thing that ended up becoming more challenging to me. And it's something that I think is just a skill that we're all particularly in the world linguistics trying to do is, like I said, understanding what other people are saying and then also making yourself understood, learning how to sort of shed some of your like more academic trappings and be able to get straight into the so what when you're talking to people of say, speaking in terms of values, speaking in the language of industry as opposed to the language of academics because I'm fortunate that half the people I talk to are linguists whereas I feel like that number really doesn't get much higher than that unless you're actually in academia. And I still have to make a concerted effort to speak differently to that other half people who aren't gonna be coming from that same space and basically learn how to break down a term that they either have a bad idea of or have never heard before into something that's easy to explain and be able to communicate those concepts without necessarily teaching a course every time you get in the room with somebody because then people are gonna be afraid to be in the room with you. I think my transition was also like kind of logistical related, it was more kind of like time management for me because I guess like when you're working when I'm working on a project by myself in school, I can just keep on going but I really had to, I think I'm still learning this but to be like to remember that other people have things to do in their days and that I don't wanna keep them on teams for too long. So it's a little bit like kind of learning to like set reminders for teams like look at my calendar, make sure my notifications are off during meetings. All of that was really kind of weird but I think people understand that you're still figuring out your calendar. Don't know like when some things like when I delete this meeting I can't get it back anymore. Learning like the language of the company I guess like I think someone sent me there's a thing within ETS called the ETS alphabet super people list all the different acronyms that are used to help people out. Things like that, yeah. I would say the two, the things that have I've noticed the most. One are the way like I think I had this idea that in industry deadlines were a bigger deal than they were in academia. And I'm a big like opponent of that viewpoint now because in academia there are deadlines that matter. If you have to teach a class they really you cannot just not teach your class. And if a homework is due at that time it's like basically due at that time or there are serious penalties. And in industry the big difference is people like to talk a lot about deadlines. There's a lot of urgency with which they talk about things but only some of those things actually have to happen by the certain day. And so I've had a lot of issues so far in my industry career with like I'm really hustling to finish something cause I think people really want it and then they don't touch it for like four days. And I'm kind of like, oh I don't understand why I was working so hard on this if you didn't actually need it. And so kind of understanding that in industry there's a lot more of multiple people all telling you they need something immediately and it's not necessarily true that they do. And so you have to kind of sort this out. Luckily there's also it's they're not likely going to fire you immediately if you do happen to drop a ball and that's a thing I'm having to remind myself too. And then the other kind of weird thing is specifically coming from a PhD I was so used to essentially running my own business so every problem that the projects I'm working on is my problem. And if I don't fix that problem then it doesn't get fixed. But the whole thing about teamwork is that like sometimes you're working on something really hard and you know it's really hard and it's not working and it's actually not your problem to solve. You need to point it out but you don't need to expend your mental energy trying to solve that. And that's really taking me a lot of time to learn because individual research is so like internally focused. And so those are kind of in terms of working on teams like I think I have a lot to learn. I mean, I'm a very sociable person but I have a lot to learn about working on teams because I've become so self-reliant that it's like learning about more about like, yeah that those aspects of teamwork that has been the biggest transition for me. Great. So we've got about 20 minutes left and I wanna open it up to some more audience questions. So if you have asked a question in the chat and you feel like it hasn't been answered yet please ping us again or if you'd like to turn on your video and audio and ask a question live. We'd love to have that too. Yeah, Aubrey, I see you raised your hand. Why don't you go ahead? Hi everyone and hi Mark, nice to see you. So I have a question that I put in the chat earlier back when we were talking about interviewing. So in the different stages were there any moments that really surprised you or you felt very unprepared for and how did you kind of handle those gracefully? And I go first. I have a story that I like to share which is I thought I was gonna have a 30 minute informational interview and then at minute 25 the person said, okay, I'm gonna send you a Google doc. We're gonna do a little coding interview now which I was not anticipating and had not practiced for. And I mean, I was coding regularly at work at that point. So it was sort of like, okay, we'll let's see what we can do. And then it turned out to be a package that most analytical linguists would be familiar with working with CSVs, the CSV package, CSV module. I actually use a different module called Pandas and so the specific syntax of CSV is like, I can figure it out if I can pull up a webpage but not in this sort of like coding interview. And so what I didn't say is I did not expect that this was going to happen. I mean, that was true but it sort of didn't matter at that point. So I was like, okay, well, I'm not actually super familiar with this module. I would normally use Pandas to do it. I think this is what the code is doing. Ultimately I said in the interview like, I know that I can figure this out but I'm not able to do it right now. Like I can't do it in front of you but I know basically what this code is doing. And it ended up that that was enough to advance me to the next round. So the key thing when this sort of like unexpected thing happens would be to not say, oh my God, like this is not what I expected to just do your best. And if that's good enough, then it will be good enough. And if it's not, then there is also a point of it that's sort of like, I don't think I want this job. If that's the level they're expecting, then I maybe don't have it and I don't wanna feel stressed out at work all the time. So you often, someone put this in the chat and you hear this a lot. Like a lot of people told me like, think out loud. They want you to think out loud. They want to hear how you think. And I'm sort of like, okay, what exactly does that mean? And it just means any of the processing that you're doing in your head, like this is confusing. And I'm confused because X, Y, Z say those things out loud. I had a very helpful interviewer once who was like, who asked me a couple of times. It seems like you're confused. What are the things that you're deciding between? And that helped them to be like, oh, any time that I'm like not talking because I'm thinking really hard, I'm just gonna say out loud what I'm deciding between. And I think that is a way to work through the stuff where a clear answer does not immediately spring to mind. Oh yeah, trip, great. Yeah, I'll just speak briefly. And I hope this is somewhat on topic too with the question you're asking. And for anything about any interview, it wasn't a whole lot that I can think of where it was just like a moment where I like stumbled and then like was able to kind of recover out of it. Like I mentioned, I had a couple of, I've had a couple of coding interviews both of which didn't go fantastically well just cause I got stuck in the weeds on it, which I would just say is a general advice. If you're gonna get stuck on it, Mark's advice is very good. Saying what you're thinking, being as communicative possible is the best way to like get them to understand where you're coming from. And if you're making mistakes, why you're making them, why that's not necessarily a bad thing. One thing I will say it sort of like was more of an interview issue that I ran into was related to an application process I went through where I had that coding interview, it went not great and I ended up not being eligible for the full-time position they were going for. But there was, I was called almost immediately afterwards in relation to a contract position. However, I had left the house to take a walk and in the time between me coming back, seeing that message and replying that position had been filled. And that was definitely the single most like demoralizing moment of my job hunt. And I would just say if that sort of thing happens to you, it's not, you're not the only person it's happened to, and it's okay because you just kind of, I did take a couple of days to kind of get back into it, but it's just the kind of thing that can happen sometimes for really high fast-paced, high-powered firms. It's never anything personal. And you're still you, you still have those skills and to just find what actually will work and be there for that next phone call. Sophia, anything to add on this one? I really like the points that I've been raised so far, like talking through and also like, yeah, sometimes stuff happens and it's just, I think definitely like expressing, and I think sometimes like I've had interview, I feel like it just really depends on who's interviewing you. Like some people really didn't like it when I express uncertainty about what I was doing. And some people were okay with that. And it really makes you think like, okay, if they're not okay with me like talking this way, then maybe it's not a good fit. Like if they always want me to know everything or like speak in certain terms, I don't think I could work in a place like that. So sometimes it's just not a good fit between the interviewer and you, and that's okay. All right, Kia, do you wanna ask your question? Sure, yeah, thank you all so much for this really, really helpful panel. This might be more relevant for Sophia and Mark, but I guess what I'm curious about is like thinking about the, what you've highlighted as very competitive markets in places like Seattle and San Francisco, I'm in Seattle. What sort of advice would you have about how to differentiate yourself or sort of set yourself apart from the million and one applicants that you're up against? I guess I'll go first if that's okay, Sophia. I don't. So I think one thing is one great piece of advice that I got from Meg Rizdal who once said, hey, if anyone wants to talk to me on Twitter and I talked to her and she was very helpful. She, in terms of trying to think of what special can I do, I think maintaining a web presence even beyond LinkedIn is a really good idea because if it happens that a recruiter actually spends enough time to Google you or to find your website or whatever, just to give them something to chew on if they get sort of curious about you. So I actually started a blog with some blog posts that were kind of very like this kind of blog posts like, oh, gee, how do we find data and that kind of stuff? And at the time I was sort of like, is this really what I need to be doing? But now I can see that like, if you just give recruiters something to chew on when they find your presence somewhere where you're more than just your resume or your resume plus a photo on LinkedIn, I think that's a good way to sort of help yourself stand out. And speaking specifically from the technical side of things, like if you have any sort of technical stuff that you've done, just throw it up on a GitHub. I mean, don't worry about whether it's flashy enough. They will, if it's not flashy enough then you wouldn't make it through the interview process anyway, so just put it out there so that they can find it and they can be curious about you, which is one of the things that's the hardest to do is get recruiters to actually take an interest and move you forward. So that would be in terms of like how to stand out is to just add more to your presence online. I think I kind of want to say something similar except like for a year resume or cover letter, you can also do things that like sort of dry on like your unique experiences and like, I don't know, like the combination of your experiences and there's just a lot of people in Seattle who are working in a language in tech. But I think everyone kind of has their own unique set of skills and there's a lot of, the cool thing about it is like there's lots of opportunities. Like I think when I was there, I was contacted by some recruiters and those positions that I was contacted for ultimately got filled by my classmates, but then like looking back, the sets of skills that they had were like really suited for that position. So I think as long as you kind of like stick to what you, your special, special set and like what you and look for what you like, you'll find something. Anybody else that people, sorry, any other questions that people want to chime in in our last few minutes here? Yeah, Marina. Yeah, just a good question. I was wondering whether you were applying when you first jobs with the referral or through like LinkedIn or company website? Because this year I applied to like a bunch of internship like either through website or referrals, but like I couldn't find the one that suited me well. So I was curious how they worked for you all. Thank you. I had some referrals and I had some where I was contacted from LinkedIn. The sort of bigger companies, they, I get the impression that like referrals are just sort of whatever, like you don't have to know the person particularly well, but I also found I didn't necessarily get a lot of mileage out of that. So I think I was referred for a language engineer position at Amazon like six times and I didn't even get called by a recruiter. So I don't, that was actually really hard for me because I didn't understand why they wouldn't even want to talk to me. But I have heard for those big companies that like if you don't have a referral, I've heard like forget it, just don't even try is what I've heard. And that seems like a silly piece of advice. Like why would you not try? But just don't expect that you would necessarily hear anything from the big companies without a referral because they just get so many applications and the recruiters kind of have to manage that somehow. All right, if there's no other thoughts on referrals there. Monica, I see you've raised your hand. Would you like to ask your question? Yeah, it's not a question, it's a big thank you. It's like having three good friends talking to us and giving their best of their experiences for the ones who are international. You're teaching us a foreign language, believe me, because it's just like knowing how to navigate and how, what to expect and what not to expect. So this has been a great panel, really, thank you. Excellent, I think we all think this has been a good panel too. I think we've all heard things here that we would have loved to have known the first time we were doing our job search. Did you wanna ask a question as well, Monica, or just that comment? Okay, thank you. Janice, I see you've raised your hand, why don't you chime in? Yeah, I also wanna say thank you. This is like such good information to know just going into like job searching. But I was wondering, well, two questions. First, did you ever have to give references from like previous employers or from like your professors or supervisors or anything like that? And then also for Sophia, I was just wondering, like, did you go to school in Canada and then got the job in the US or were you already going to school there? For the first question, which I'm sorry, I kind of forget the first question now. Because I was so close. If you needed to give a reference from your like schooling, so like a professor or anything like that. I remember having to give some references, but not for every job. And I think they usually came in at like a later stage in the process, if I remember correctly. And it was usually two or three that I had to give. And I was actually, I went to, I did my master's in the States in Seattle and that's how I came across the opportunity in the States. But ultimately I was hired, actually I applied for the position in the States, but then I was hired for the Canadian, it's a Canadian branch, I guess, or it's actually a consulting company that branched off of the main ETS. And I'm trying to remember like what that whole, like navigating that international part because I said that I wanted to live in San Francisco and then my first choice was San Francisco, my second choice was Princeton and then my third choice was Canada. But because I left the States, I was on an F1 visa for my student time and then I was approved for an OPT. But then because of COVID, I kind of decided I would come home to Canada. So I left the country at that point, which is why it was easier for me to work in Canada after that. But I know that you can get the OPT, which gives you more time to job search and then that there's a three months, if you go to school in the States and then there's that three year OPT extension for tech that you would be eligible for. My references were checked after the final round interview when they wanted to move forward with an offer basically, that's when, and that was only for Grammarly that they were ever checked for a contract. I don't think they would check and I'm not sure if they did for my other full-time offer. Yeah, I think I would echo that. I have given references and a few different occasions. I've never heard from the people I put in whether or not they had ever been reached out to. So I think it is kind of a crapshoot as to whether or not they will actually end up following up on those. I think we have time for one last question. If anybody has anything burning to ask, they've not gotten the answer yet. All right, well, it sounds like everybody's gonna have a great success looking for their first job then. All of the questions have been answered. Thank you so much to our panelists, Tripp, Mark and Sophia for coming today, for being so open about sharing your experiences and I think for really contributing a lot to what we're doing for linguistics career launch and trying to help get that initial momentum for people going into their careers. So we're so, so grateful for your participation and thank you as well to our audience for being a great audience and having so many questions and being so interactive throughout the whole time. I will speak on behalf of myself and all of our panelists to say that we wish all of you best of luck in your first job searches.