December 2017 - January 2018

Stop complaining. Stop making excuses. Nobody is listening. -Gary Vaynerchuk

I went to India for the Christmas holidays as well as to try my luck for the first week of campus placements at my University. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to secure an offer in the first week of the on-campus placements. I won’t give any lame reasons that I only had 1-week time to sit for the placements and that I wasn’t prepared because of the previous semesters’ thesis abroad. Plain and simple: I didn’t make it. I came back to my home from the University a week earlier to relax and cool down before my departure to Germany. That was a bold and an unconventional decision of not sitting in the placements further. I accepted my micro-failure to build something on it in near future.

January 2018 - March 2018

Communication is the key.

I happily flew to Germany for my next adventure: Masters thesis project under Ivo (he’s the one under whom I did my first ever foreign internship in 2016). Meanwhile, in December, I didn’t apply for the prestigious Max Planck Institute’s Ph.D. program, which I was really interested to do before. Later I realized that it was an instant gratification that was making the call. I resisted that call and instead spoke to Ivo (my supervisor) about it. Ivo was quite supportive and encouraged me to explore different dimensions other than academia and suggested to make an informed choice before choosing a research career. I’m very much grateful to him for his unconditional support.
So here I am: No job offer | No Ph.D. application | only left with Masters Thesis work. What did I do? Heads down and work- that’s what I did.

April 2018 - May 2018

When we don’t have anything to lose we try our best to achieve what we want.

I started applying to various companies across Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. The weekdays went like this: Institute work-> Home-> Job applications-> Time with friends->Repeat. The best thing that I learned while my stay abroad is being accountable and responsible for your own tasks. When you are actually accountable for some task then your productivity goes up and you try to be result oriented rather than work-oriented. That’s what I used to do. I used to ask Ivo to schedule group meetings where I can show my monthly progress. This kept me on the right track because presenting in front of the group made me accountable and that’s how my work, job applications or leisure time wasn’t affected as I exactly knew when the next presentation was gonna happen and how much effort should I need to put in that.

June 2018

Work Hard or Work Smart? Do Both! -Gary Vaynerchuk

Finally, I saw the result of five years of my patience, hard work and support from my mentors Ivo, Florian, Prof. Rajiv Kumar, and Rishi bhaiya:

  • After sleepless weeks of thesis writing:
    On 15th May 2018, I successfully defended my Masters thesis at Center for Systems Biology Dresden (CSBD), Germany.
  • After numerous rejections:
    On 1st June 2018, I got a kick start to my career with a job offer for Data Scientist position from a Dutch company. The first and the best offer, I would say.
  • After five years of university life:
    On 25th July 2018, I received my degree in Computer Science and Mathematics and became a proud alumnus of BITS Pilani.

Ivo and me on my last day at the Max Planck Institute.

So, this is how I landed my first job as a Data Scientist and I’m loving it!!