Part 2: The Application Process — How it Works and What You Need to Do

8 min readSep 19, 2022

This is Part 2 in a 5-part series for Social Science PhD students on how to apply for UX Research internships. Read Parts 1, 3, 4 and 5 here.

I am a Sociology PhD student at UC Irvine. I am primarily a qualitative researcher, and I study gender, technology, culture and inequality in India. I have never worked outside a university or in a non-academic role; and as a social scientist, I don’t have a background in engineering, pure sciences, or design. This summer, I completed a UX Research Internship with the Fitbit team at Google, in San Francisco.

Many academics in social science are looking to transition to industry jobs at the moment. If you are one of them, or if you are wondering how to explore industry jobs, perhaps this series of articles will be useful to you. I describe why I decided to explore UXR internships, what my application process was like, how to prepare for interviews, and what according to me are the most common mistakes made by social scientists applying to these roles.

Disclaimer: This article is based entirely on my personal experience of going through the hiring process for UX research internship roles in 2021–2022.

With no resources or experience in applying for tech internships, I had a hard time at first. I really felt the lack of structural training and support in social science departments for industry jobs, compared to the heavy training and focus on industry roles in STEM departments. For instance, we don’t have the concept of placement cells, internship fairs, interview prep or CPT support, as departments prepare you primarily for academic jobs. This is something that needs to slowly change. We need more skills training and professionalization as part of our PhD.

I applied to internships three times. The first two years, companies had cut or reduced internship programs due to Covid-19, and I had no luck getting my applications through to the interview round. The third year, I applied to around 20–25 roles, successfully interviewed with three companies and received two offers.

Broadly speaking, there were two steps, 1) Applying and 2) Interviewing. Let me take you through the process and offer my tips.

STEP 1— APPLYING

Internship timelines

Companies put out calls for summer internships starting from August, all the way till March, for internships that start in June. I have been advised that it is important to get in applications by December, however this has not matched my experience. I started keeping an eye out for internship postings from October or November, and made a list of positions all the way till January. It is normal to keep applying for positions till the end of the application season, till one gets a solid offer. In my experience, there is a lot of activity after the December holidays and New Year, when teams scramble to finalize interns. Most of my communication with recruiters all three years, began in late December to late January.

Finding internship positions

These are a few ways to search for suitable internship roles:

Set job alerts on LinkedIn and Glassdoor using keywords like ‘research’, ‘UX’, ‘intern’, ‘policy’, ‘qualitative’, etc, depending on what you are looking for.
Browse the job pages of tech companies regularly using appropriate filters (for instance, Google Jobs will throw up dozens and even hundreds of internship roles which you can filter to find roles suitable for you).
Post on Twitter and LinkedIn using suitable hashtags so that people can send you and point you to roles which are a good fit.

I did all of the above and I made a list of roles based on them, organized in a spreadsheet, along with the deadlines for each position (some were rolling deadlines). I would apply to a few roles whenever I found time during the academic term, and I made sure not to miss the important ones.

You will want to read the internship job descriptions carefully to make sure you fit the eligibility criteria, but you should feel free to use your judgment and apply for roles where you don’t fit the criteria exactly, when appropriate. For instance, many of the roles I applied to asked for majors in HCI, psychology, anthropology but not sociology — however as a tech researcher I thought I might be equally eligible and applied anyway, and this worked out for me. Check between companies’ “required” and “preferred” criteria as well.

Networking and referrals

Do you need a referral? Unfortunately (especially if you are an introvert), networking and referrals are very important if you want to get a tech internship, especially at a large company, because the first round of review is usually automated, and it’s anybody’s guess if your CV will move through to be considered by a human recruiter. A bit of help at this stage can be very valuable.

Why do you need a referral? A referral will ensure that your application will at least be seen by a human being. If the automated process checks for Ivy League school names, for example, your CV might not make it through. Generally speaking, you have much higher chances of making it through to the next round with a referral.

How do referrals work? They work differently at different companies. At Meta, your referral is also your application, so you don’t have to do anything on your end once your referee has made their submission. At Google and Microsoft, after your referee submits the referral, you receive a special link through which you can apply. In any case, it’s best to request a referral before applying and ask the referee how the referral process works at their company.

How do you get a referral? There is no help for it — you must reach out heavily to people on LinkedIn, through your personal networks, through social media — whatever works, and ask them. You can search for people posting on LinkedIn advertising for similar internship roles and also find recruiters and UX researchers from the same company on LinkedIn, and DM them. Facebook and Slack support groups for social scientists moving to industry, have a lot of people who are willing to help applicants by giving them referrals (I relied on two groups in particular, which you can find here and here — and I have listed them at the end of this article again so you can find them easily).

As an academic, you may be someone who feels it is very rude to bother strangers, and you might spend excessive amounts of time crafting perfect emails (I do both of these things). Try to leave this mental frame behind — rest assured that DM-ing people on LinkedIn to network is a very common practice in industry — you do not have to feel apprehensive, embarrassed or reticent. People are used to this, often do it as a matter of practice, and will usually be kind and polite (if they have the time to reply, that is).

Here is what you do. Craft a brief DM — mention the role you are interested in, your background and skillset (just a few lines), and why you are moving from academia to industry, then ask for a 5 or 10 minute coffee chat/or directly for a referral. Practice doing this — for several DMs you may get one response, so you have to keep at it.

What I did: I used all the methods above. Many of my engineer friends from college work at tech companies now, so I requested them for referrals. I also used the Slack and FB groups I linked above, to reach out to people for referrals. Finally, I networked on LinkedIn and requested and received referrals from there as well.

Application Materials

So you have made a list of internship roles and have reached out to people for referrals. What do you do next?

If you are the type to start stress-procrastinating when faced with a big task, then you will be pleasantly surprised — most companies have extremely easy, quick and streamlined applications. Most applications only require you to submit your CV and may additionally ask you to fill out details about your education and work experience. Often there will be a place for an optional cover letter. Applications can take as little as 5 minutes to fill. Here is what you need to do:

Create a 1 page CV. This should contain key details, chiefly your educational background, skills (including research methods and programming languages/softwares), key courses, key projects, key publications, and work experience. Be strategic in your choices as you have limited space. I used a popular LaTeX template which you can find here. You can make an Overleaf account, log in and start editing this template directly. With a bit of trial and error you will be able to figure out how to make your CV in LaTeX.
Write a generic cover letter with your background, skillset, research and work experience, motivation for applying to that company, and why you are a good fit for the role. Many companies allow you to upload an optional cover letter. With minimal tweaking (tailoring the letter for each specific company) and effort you can put in that extra step for your applications if you prepare a template cover letter in advance.

STEP 2 — INTERVIEWING

This is the typical process for UXR internships, give or take a couple of steps:

Online application — you will fill and submit this online.
Recruiter screen — a recruiter will speak to you briefly on the phone, usually to assess if you are who you say you are, and to ask questions about your background and motivation. (This step is sometimes replaced by an online questionnaire).
Technical interview(s) — UX researchers at the company will test your technical skills and knowledge using a combination of hypothetical scenarios and behavioral questions.
Portfolio review — you may be asked to present a research project to UXRs, product managers, and/or designers.
Team-matching interview — if the company has a lot of UXR roles, you may speak to managers from different teams where they assess whether you are a good fit for their project (and you can assess whether they are a good fit for you). This step may not apply to all companies.

In Part 3, I will describe my interview experience and share how I prepared for the interviews.

Part 3: How I Prepared for Interviews