I grew up in an engineer’s household in the Silicon Valley, always knowing my career would take me into tech. Along the way, I poked around hardware engineering, coding, graphic arts, and a few other related disciplines before finding my home in the psychology of human computer interaction.

I’ve done stints at advanced R&D labs, helped launch products worth billions of dollars in monthly revenue, and along the way conducted hundreds of interviews with students and professionals like, I presume, you.

So here’s some advice to help you start out your career.

You’re not married to a title, funding source, career path, or work domain.

High performing students often ask about whether to go into academia, or whether their research is relevant to high tech. The former is a very personal question—get multiple opinions and don’t be deterred if you happen to have an opinionated mentor—but the latter is an exercise in branding and your ability to make connections between your knowledge and the needs of those around you.

Rebrand yourself as a user researcher, figure out why your work is important, and focus on ways to add value immediately at several times your salary per year.

Come to the Valley and intern here.

Silicon Valley internships are often better paid, perk’ed, and perceived than those elsewhere. This is especially true of household name companies, and remains true even if your current professor doesn’t think so.

Bear in mind that you may be expected to do simple usability studies at first and have to prove the value of your other methodologies. This is the challenge of bringing a new field into an industry.

Also, ask whether the company will pay relocation for internships.

Have a research portfolio.

Produce a portfolio of work and make it available online. Link to it in your resume. Your interviewer may not always read it ahead of time, but pointing to a URL during a phone interview and making your explanations multi-modal can make all the difference.

No, really though, have a research portfolio. In the tech industry, we’d want to not only see actual projects you’ve worked on, but also short, compelling samples of reports. Charts, diagrams, etc. are very good. If you’re low on examples, show us how you would go about understanding or improving some products based on data you have collected, or would collect. You may have to give a job talk, anyhow, so be prepared.

If that didn’t convince you, here’s a secret: A list of publications with links to some conference articles doesn’t tell me as much as you think it does. It’s hard to tell what your co-authors contributed—should I be hiring your professor, or you?

Conference publications are also horrible, terrible pieces of communication design, and the skills needed to take an interesting piece of work and murder it into APA style are exactly the opposite of the skills needed to stop a bad product launch, or change the world.

Make resumes skimmable and relevant.

Start your resume with a skills section that includes methodologies you’re good at, including any stats background. One page resumes are good, but don’t be afraid to go into 2 pages. CV’s are fine, as long as they’re not more than a few pages. This is usually not a problem for students.

If you’re applying for very different types of companies, you’d be silly to send them all identical resumes. So don’t do that.

Have a track record.

Consider submitting to professional conferences, contests, or other work that shows you’ve been active as a student.

Be recommended.

One of the things I look for in new grads is a connection to faculty. So consider doing activities that make it easy for us to tell that the faculty would endorse you.

Shared authorship, for example, gets big points so long as I also get a sense for your contribution.

Take the hint.

I’m happy to give advice about typical internship processes to high performing human factors graduate students. Ping me @lrprada on Twitter.

This is how to think about salary.

Congratulations, you got offers. But which is best, and how much negotiation room do you have?

Here’s a handy equation to help you track job offers.

Total compensation = Quality of co-workers and corp culture + quality of work domain + social impact + quality of work resources (red tape, facilities, conferences, etc.) + work/life balance + mentorship opportunities + location + spouse opportunities + base salary + stock options + restricted stock units + stock purchasing plans + performance bonuses + company bonuses + company growth projections + taxes/cost of living + retirement matching (and loan availability) + company stability + major benefits (insurances, etc) + perks (onsite amenities, educational programs, etc)

Say thank you.

Following up after an interview helps you.

I started receiving many more thank you notes after posting this last piece of advice, which came from a panel I once did with a hiring manager who would throw away resumes if a candidate didn’t follow-up on interviews.

For the record, I don’t actually need a thank you note, myself. (But I’m human, so it probably does help.) I do three interviews a week, provide my feedback, and move on. Just don’t feel obligated, or offended if I don’t follow-up.

Hope that was useful. Thanks for reading.