Your First Two Steps To Getting Hired

Step One: Read the Job Description. Step Two: Read the Blog.

Company blogs are underrated when it comes to interview prep. Often, when the subject of how to land a new role comes up, they don’t even get mentioned. Which is a shame, because they can provide a wealth of critical information, and with what you find there, you can do a better job of delivering a compelling case for why you’re the right person for the role.

To try and give you an idea of how and why company blogs can help you prepare for an interview, we’ll look at a company blog from one of our partners: NVIDIA.

The Official NVIDIA Blog

Just by going to the landing page of the NVIDIA blog, we can learn some important things. From the navigation bar, we can learn the topics that are important to the company: Deep Learning, Virtual Reality, Driving, Graphics, Gaming, and Data.

From the sidebar, we can learn that NVIDIA cares about social media, and likely has a big social footprint: everything from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, to Instagram, Tumbler, and Reddit, are all represented. Already, you have an action item. Go follow everything.

Driving

Let’s go into one of the navigation categories: Driving. Without even reading an article, we can already tell that for NVIDIA, “driving” means two things; the driver experience (design), and autonomy. If you’re a student in our Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree program, then it’s that second one you’re particularly interested in. Again, without even reading an article, you can easily discern that autonomy levels are an important topic right now — two posts in January alone focus on this.

Now, let’s get into the real detective work. Let’s look at this post: Dreaming of Driverless: What’s the Difference Between Level 2 and Level 5. Specifically, let’s look at the copy for Level 4:

According to SAE guidelines, a level 4 car should be able to drive itself safely, “even if a human driver does not respond appropriately to a request to intervene.” A level 4 car will slow down, pull over or park itself at a safe spot if the driver doesn’t take control when requested, which might happen in tougher navigation like off-road driving or unmapped roads.

It’s a task that will take enormous amounts of computing power. And today’s autonomous test cars typically carry a trunk full of computing gear. That’s changing, however. NVIDIA plans to enable level 4 autonomy with NVIDIA DRIVE Xavier SoC, which offers 30 trillion operations per second of performance in a compact package (see “NVIDIA Xavier, World’s Most Powerful SoC Brings Dramatic New Capabilities”).

The first level 4 cars are scheduled to launch in 2021. And if the manufacturer’s vision for its self-driving fleet is realized, these cars will not just be transport units, but will also resemble small offices, theaters or hotel rooms on wheels.

One blog post later, and you now have a clear snapshot of the work NVIDIA will be engaged in for the next 3 years: The first level 4 cars are scheduled to launch in 2021. That knowledge can come in very handy for everything from knowing what skills to learn and what projects to put in your portfolio, to knowing what to talk about in an interview.

Virtual Reality

Let’s jump over to Virtual Reality on the navigation bar. One look at the featured stories, and you feel like you know the story: GPUs. That’s where NVIDIA connects to VR, and that’s how you want to connect to NVIDIA. Which may mean — if you’re more interested in creating VR experiences, and less so powering them — that NVIDIA may not be right for you.

But not so fast!

Let’s open one of those GPU posts up: All Greek to Me: GPUs Power Groundbreaking VR Experience. Here’s how the post begins:

If you’ve ever dabbled in Latin poetry, you may have stumbled upon Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Its tales of transformation and reality have fascinated artists for centuries.

In a similar theme, a new artwork, La Dispersion du Fils, tells the story of Actaeon — a hunter who’s turned into a stag by the goddess Diana and devoured by his own hounds.

Just as Ovid’s original work blurs the lines of reality, this new piece immerses viewers in the metamorphosis thanks to a 360-degree omnistereoscopic VR system and living 3D “tapestries” of moving images, constructed entirely in real time.

This may at first glance seem a bit headier than expected, but it’s ultimately indicative of a genuine engagement with creativity and creators, and that’s an important thing to know about NVIDIA’s presence in the VR space—especially if you’re interested in pursuing a VR role with the company.

Data Center

Let’s try one more category. This time: Data Center. There’s a wealth of valuable information to be found here as well, everything from how a table tennis story 40 years ago led to a show-stopping demo at CES, to news about NVIDIA investing in 3 new Data Science companies. The post also includes a list of 10 other companies NVIDIA has invested in over the course of the previous year:

• ABEJA — Tokyo startup focused on AI-powered retail analytics systems
• Datalogue — New York AI data-mining platform developed out of Cornell University
• Deep Instinct — Israeli startup focused on cybersecurity
• Element AI — Montreal startup helps companies quickly integrate AI capabilities
• Fastdata.io — California startup offering streaming analytics software
• JingChi — Chinese self-driving startup developing an autonomous Uber-like service
• Optimus Ride — MIT spinoff developing fully autonomous vehicles
• SoundHound — Silicon Valley startup building voice-enabled AI solutions
• TempoQuest — Colorado startup doing GPU-accelerated weather forecasting
• TuSimple — Chinese autonomous truck startup
• Zebra Medical — Israeli startup using AI to read medical images

If I’m you, and I’m interested in NVIDIA, and in the employment opportunities in the spaces NVIDIA has a presence in, then that list above just turned into my next jobs-related research project!

Don’t Forget The Job Description

Yes, there’s a great deal to be learned about a company from their blog, and yes, what you learn can make a critical difference in how you perform during an interview, and even how you prepare for the job over the long-term. A 2017 article from CareerBuilder highlights 5 Things You Need To Know About A Company Before You Apply For A Job, which are:

• Company size
• Company culture
• Competitors
• Values
• Potential for growth

This roughly squares with an informative article from IT recruitment specialists Inteqna, entitled: What You Should Already Know About The Company Before Your Interview. In that post, they highlight the following:

• The History
• The Interviewer
• The Company’s Values
• Recent News
• The Role Itself

That last item is the critical one: The Role Itself. A blog can help with much of the above, especially things like culture and values, as well as recent news. But the job description is going to give you really critical details about the role itself.

Stand Out From The Crowd

Let’s circle back to that first persona scenario. Let’s say you’re a student in our Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree program, and you’re interested in NVIDIA. And let’s say you find this open role:

Autonomous Vehicle System Software Integration Engineer

You read down the description, and lo and behold, look what you find!

Ways To Stand Out From The Crowd

• Experience working in embedded Linux and QNX operating system platforms
• Building tools and frameworks to implement and support CI and CD work flow
• Experience delivering content with Docker containers

That’s a great example of why NVIDIA is such a great company. It’s also a great example of why you should read the company blog second, and the job description first!

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This post was written by Christopher Watkins, Senior Writer and Chief Words Officer, Udacity