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I need advice on how to get a job in Robotics. I got a rejection when I applied in IRobot or some company related to Robotics. I am a international student.

I have a masters in Artificial Intelligence and Bachelors in Electrical and Electronics engineering. Master's thesis is based on using machine vision in solving marine science problem. I made few robots. Two of them are, Hexapod walker and fire rescue robot. I am comfortable with C, Prolog and MATLAB.

Can someone suggest me where I am going wrong? I want to develop career in robotics.

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Did any of these companies say why they rejected you? – FrustratedWithFormsDesigner May 12 '11 at 20:30
Always try and find out why you were rejected. The answer might not always make sense, but you might get something. You should always get feedback from interviews. – ChrisF♦ May 12 '11 at 20:38
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At our company we don't tell people why they didn't get hired, it opens us up to liability. I'm sure other companies have the same policy. Likely it'll be difficult to get a real answer. – Byte56 May 12 '11 at 20:43

closed as not constructive by Walter, Yannis Rizos♦ Mar 7 '12 at 9:17

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1 Answer

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Sounds like you're doing ok, it's sometimes just a waiting game. You have to keep trying. I would suggest starting with smaller companies than iRobot. Get your foot in the door somewhere, then move up to the larger companies when you have more experience.

Many companies don't care so much about your degrees. They want to know that you can actually apply the information. Make sure you're demonstrating your skills, create videos of your machine vision applications and your robots, put them on YouTube. Publish code showing your skills. Make it known that you know what you're doing, and companies will be happy to have you work for them.

Don't give up yet, sometimes it's hard to get a job doing exactly what you want to do at first. Good luck!

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Sometimes it's also geography. Apparently, some cities just don't have a lot of companies that work in robotics. I don't know enough about the industry to know what locations do have more positions, but this is what I've heard from a friend who no longer works in robotics because there just are that many jobs in town. If this is the case, moving (or at least applying to jobs) to such a city might greatly improve OP's odds. – FrustratedWithFormsDesigner May 12 '11 at 20:35
True, relocation will likely be required. Some companies don't want to have to deal with visas and the like. So that adds an extra challenge :( – Byte56 May 12 '11 at 20:37

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