A strategic guide to proving your impact, demonstrating your fit, and winning the research job offer.

A research interview isn’t just a test of your knowledge; it’s a test of your value. While you can recite theorems and explain your methods, can you convince a panel that your work matters to them?

What I cover here about interview prep may well be universal, but given that my interview experience was primarily for academic positions, I will limit my scope to academic research interviews and AI or Data Science Interviews, sometimes focused on AI for Healthcare/Medicine.

The interview is the critical transition from a paper CV to a potential colleague.

Once you get selected for the interviews, you are no longer just your list of publications or CGPA; you are now judged based on your:

• Foundations — basic theorems, concepts, and Generative AI technologies [will not be covered in this article]
• Research value and expertise that you can bring to their team

Table of Contents

· What will be covered in this article
· My Journey
· Typical Format of a Research Interview
∘ 1. Short presentation of 15 to 30 minutes, followed by Q&A
∘ 2. Direct interview without any presentation
∘ 3. Direct Interview during MS and PhD Entrance Exams
· What type of Research Interviews have I faced till now?
· What is an Interviewer Looking For? What does Perfect Fit mean?
∘ Strong knowledge of basic concepts and fundamentals
∘ Research Skills
∘ Alignment with Company Priorities or Research Lab Goals
∘ To Summarize
· 5 Rules to Build a Winning Mindset
∘ Rule 1: Be prepared. There is no alternative to hard work.
∘ Rule 2: Be confident and relaxed. No need to overthink.
∘ Rule 3: Play to your strengths
∘ Rule 4: Be ready for failure. Do not just say “I don’t know”.
∘ Rule 5: Winning Mindset. You are also judging whether the job is a perfect fit for you.
· To Recap… Your Checklist for Interview Success
· Final Words

What will be covered in this article

There are thousands of resources and guides on how to prepare for Data Science interviews that cover questions and strategies to prepare for answering foundational knowledge questions like “explain the self-attention mechanism of transformers” and others.

Therefore, in this article, I will only cover the second aspect, i.e., how to present your research value and convince you are the perfect fit.

Some of the techniques discussed may seem unconventional, but they worked, at least for me. I will also explain my thinking process, which may help you understand it better.

My Journey

The advice in this article isn’t just theory; it is based on my own recent experiences in the academic and industry job market. As I prepare to join my postdoc in the US quite soon, my research journey has been long.

From my B.Tech college, to my MS and PhD journey at IIT Kharagpur, being a research associate at L3S Research Center, Germany, and internships at Adobe India and GE Healthcare, Bangalore.

Research interviews were the only constant and were always there to greet me at every transition.

Typical Format of a Research Interview

1. Short presentation of 15 to 30 minutes, followed by Q&A

This is typically seen in PhD or Postdoc interviews in Germany and the US, and for industry positions post-PhD. For example, for my postdoc interview at an Ivy League US university, they allocated 20 mins for presentation and 10 minutes for Q&A. For my colleague’s interview at Microsoft Research, it was 30 to 45 minutes.

What to present is not usually told, but I always make the point to ask the interviewer or PI beforehand what he/she expects from the presentation — an overview of my best works or a deep dive into one topic, followed by a short research overview. In practice, I have seen that the second option is more successful.

This interview is usually presented before a panel of researchers or even the whole research lab. In industry, I have heard it is a standard practice for it to be recorded. The main purpose is to understand where the interviewee’s expertise can be best placed, i.e., to find the perfect fit.

I will cover the themes and mindset of presentation in the latter part of this article.

Q&A

As the name suggests, here the panel members ask questions about the technical aspects and also the impact and research value of your research paper. You need to answer the technical details very well. However, when you get stuck or something you have not considered, it is very important to keep the tone of the conversation as more of a discussion rather than a strict rebuttal or defense. Remember, here you are being tested on:

Remember, they are testing several things at once:

• Deep Involvement: How well do you know the work? Have you considered potential use cases that could benefit their team?
• Agile Thinking: Can you think on your feet when challenged?
• Coachability: Do you get defensive, or do you handle criticism like feedback and acknowledge new insights?
• How do you respond to vague questions?

2. Direct interview without any presentation

This happened in my interview for a research internship. There are multiple rounds (7, 8, may go up to 12) for recruiting for full-time positions, like the case above. But for internship positions, it is a maximum of two rounds — one technical and one research.

Here, the interviewer asks to explain the following:

• What do you work on, and what is your research area of expertise?
• Why do you want to join our lab?
• What are your future plans? (mainly to understand whether you will stay in the company for some years. If you are joining as an intern, whether you want to convert to full-time?)
• How did you contribute to Project X, and how did you tackle the research challenges? (Here, your clarity and presentation skills are tested on how you can explain a complex problem in a few sentences.)
• Do you have any questions for us? (You should ask about their recent projects and research challenges? Other logistical questions? If your expertise is NLP, you can suggest that these strategies may be worth trying.

3. Direct Interview during MS and PhD Entrance Exams

This is usually the last hurdle after you have passed the written round. There will be a panel of 7 to 8 professors, and you will be tested on GATE-level questions, focusing on Programming (using C or Python), Data Structures and Algorithms, and Discrete Mathematics. They may ask you to select your subject of choice from Operating Systems, Databases, Digital Logic, Networking, basically the GATE subjects.

They will usually ask 3 to 4 questions. Each question may start with a simple version, which is then changed to a more advanced version by adding some criterion.

They will converse with you and try to understand your fundamentals and thinking patterns. So, even if you do not know all the steps for the final answer, speak out the intermediate steps and thinking pattern. This will give you grace marks even if you do not get the final answer correctly.

What type of Research Interviews have I faced till now?

I will now list the types of research interviews I have faced in my career till now.

MS Research (Entrance, Comprehensive Exam), PhD (Entrance)— Type 3 (listed above), which lasted for 45 minutes to 1 hour

Research Associate position in a German University — Type 1 (20-minute presentation followed by Q&A), which lasted for 45 minutes. Some additional questions were asked regarding my Master’s coursework (what subjects I passed? Which was your favourite among them and why?

Research Internship position in GE Healthcare, Bangalore — Type 2 of duration 45 mins to 1 hour.

Postdoc Interview at a US University — Type 2 of duration 30 minutes, one-to-one with the professor. If they find you good enough, they will ask you to send the contact details of three references and schedule another research presentation interview (Type 1 of duration 30 minutes) with the entire research lab.

What is an Interviewer Looking For? What does Perfect Fit mean?

This is the fundamental question that you should ask before going to the interview.

Given today’s competitiveness, every person who is called for an interview has the minimum technical knowledge, a degree with a good CGPA score, and some good publications.

So, what makes you different? More importantly, how do you convey that during the short span of the interview?

Therefore, you need to understand the mindset of the interviewer and what they are looking for.

The following are the key skill sets the interviewers are looking for:

Strong knowledge of basic concepts and fundamentals

This is the most objective criterion and the necessary condition that they will first try to test. It is already done to some extent in your technical rounds. There is already a lot of material available online on this topic so I will cover it here.

Research Skills

Although this is hard to judge, it can be judged partially based on your research projects or publications. Some objective metrics are:

• conference quality (Core A* papers make a big difference)
• reputation of the lab and the supervisor or professor
• past experience in terms of research internships or other research experiences

However, the above objective metrics can be established based on your CV and your Letter of Recommendation (LoR) alone. And the interviewers know that something may look very good on paper, but in reality, that may not be the case.

This follows from the famous Goodhart’s Law that states:

All metrics of scientific evaluation are bound to be abused. Goodhart’s law […] states that when a feature of the economy is picked as an indicator of the economy, then it inexorably ceases to function as that indicator because people start to game it. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

That is where the importance of an interview lies. And this is where you need to make the difference.

It is when you are asked to select one of your research projects and explain it in detail. While you are explaining and during QA, the interviewer is looking for the following:

• Motivation behind choosing a research problem: Is the work incremental in nature or novel, or a non-trivial research problem? Is it just for the sake of a research project or paper, or is something fundamental being solved? Why is this an important problem to solve? Is the interviewee aware of the related works and technology?
• Clarity and communication skills: How confident and relaxed is the person while answering questions? Is he/she able to communicate their thoughts in a simple, concise, and easy manner instead of using tough, genre-specific words? How do they react to criticism or feedback — defensively or by treating it like a discussion? Did the presentation complete in the provided time? Were the main takeaways and problem motivation clear?

Alignment with Company Priorities or Research Lab Goals

This will be a key differentiating factor that shows your breadth of knowledge and whether you are aware of the company’s recent innovations and development.

This may be hard to do for industry interviews, but it is essential for PhD or Postdoc positions. This is because, as part of my postdoc presentation, I had mentioned my future research goals, which need to be customized to the future research agenda of the lab.

This demonstrates the quality of dedication and taking initiative of the interviewee. This also makes you memorable, so if there are multiple equally good candidates, this small change can make all the difference.

To Summarize

Interviewers look for deep knowledge of key concepts and fundamentals, as well as research skills. Finally, they will try to find a way to match your expertise with a relevant project, i.e., finding the perfect fit.

Thus, my last point brings out that if the interviewee has already taken the initiative to do so and propose some candidate suggestions, this immediately sets you apart.

Since we now know what the interviewer is looking for, let us look into how to build a winning mindset for acing the research interview.

5 Rules to Build a Winning Mindset

Rule 1: Be prepared. There is no alternative to hard work.

• Research the company: Follow the last few months of the company’s Twitter or LinkedIn and identify two to three innovations. Make short notes on it, focusing on the technology side. Think of one or two ideas to connect it with your research area or project, or publication.
• Thorough knowledge of fundamentals and key concepts: Revise and revise, keep a notebook where you jot down the key concepts. Read about past interview experiences and the questions asked.

Rule 2: Be confident and relaxed. No need to overthink.

When you are well-prepared, you should naturally have confidence. But this is not usually the case, because we are not yet relaxed.

We are not in the present; we are either thinking of the past (what chapters you have not revised or covered) or of the future (how to answer questions that I have not prepared). While it is not an easy thing not to overthink, given you are in the transition, being aware of it and trying to address it one step at a time, helps a lot.

When you are relaxed and present in the moment during the interview, you will be more spontaneous and in a better position to answer questions you are hearing for the first time.

I would suggest the following steps:

• Do not prepare anything in the last hour before the interview. Do simple things, do what you like. Take a walk, listen to music, talk with friends, take a shower, whatever you enjoy.
• In the last five minutes before the interview, focus on your breath and breathe slowly. Hold it for a little longer than usual.
• Practice giving mock interviews with your friends. This is the easiest solution that will naturally help you improve your interview experience.

Rule 3: Play to your strengths

Although it may be hard to imagine, you, too, as an interviewee, can steer the conversation. This is a natural skill you need to learn in your daily life conversations, and create win-win situations.

• Select the paper to present that you are proud to stand behind. The one that you know by heart and can answer in-depth. It need not be the A* paper or even the most recent one. For example, in my recent interviews or invited talks, I have presented my work on “vocabulary adaptation during fine-tuning” and not my genomic pretraining works. This is because I find it has more potential, wider use-cases, and sounds like a more fundamental research contribution.
• Ask clarifying questions. Remember, this is a research interview, not an MCQ test with one right answer. In any successful organization, a flat hierarchy is implemented, i.e., your senior is more like a colleague or friend, instead of a strict boss. Suppose the interviewer asks a question that you think is vague or not clear, please feel free to ask them to clarify by saying: Do you mean something like X or like Y? Do you want me to give the detailed algorithm or a method overview to start with? When you are giving options, prioritize the ones that are within your expertise.

Rule 4: Be ready for failure. Do not just say “I don’t know”.

What happens if they ask a question that you do not know or have forgotten? It is only humane not to know everything, so relax, even if you don’t know the answer. Remember, you have to answer other questions too, so do not waste energy or get nervous with this hiccup.

In such scenarios, you should:

• Never just say “I don’t know” to a question and stare in silence at the interviewer. Instead, break the question into smaller parts and explain the thought process of how you could solve it, and make up a reasonable solution. Do not worry if the final answer is wrong; the thought process you explained will work in your favor.
• Do not spend too much time on questions that you do not know how to answer. Although it is tempting to be perfect and be 100% right all the time, it is not required. Do not be so hard on yourself. Make up a quick solution and move on to the next problem. If they insist on the problem, you can even take a call and say frankly that it is not your expertise and suggest some topics you are great at.

Rule 5: Winning Mindset. You are also judging whether the job is a perfect fit for you.

The interview is just an interview and not the end of the world. Treat it as a learning experience. Also, you should internally believe that you, too, are trying to see if the job or PhD is a perfect fit for you. You, too, are important; no one is doing you a favor.

Therefore, I suggest making full use of the very last question of an interviewer, which is “Do you have any questions for me?”

We usually do not prepare for it, and try to get it over as fast as possible. But that is a big mistake.

If I were an interviewer, it would be a big red flag for me.

You can get important information regarding your position that can help you choose among the multiple offers. It also makes the interviewer feel valued. Apart from that, if this is your dream company, you would automatically have so many questions to ask.

Like in my research internship interview, I remember we spent at least 10 minutes of my 45-minute interview. I had asked what the current research challenges you are facing are. How is it different from academia?

Since you will be facing a researcher or research scientist, they would be more than happy to speak about their research. At least, I would be.

• Prepare personalised questions: For example, in one of my postdoc interviews, I had asked — (i) what are the research expectations for me in terms of publications, teaching, and venues of publication. This was important for me as I work in the intersection of computer science and medicine. (ii) Will I be working in a team or solo? Will I get a PhD or a Master’s student to mentor?
• Ask follow-up questions: In my research internship interview, after asking about research challenges, I followed up with how generative AI models for medicine were evaluated in industry. It will be project-specific, i.e., existing benchmarks may not be applicable for their particular use case.

Mentorship 101: What to look for in a research mentor

How I had secured a research associate position during my Ph.D. in India and moved to Germany?

To Recap… Your Checklist for Interview Success

I hope the previous sections have given you a clearer picture of the research interview landscape. To help you put these ideas into practice, here is a summary of the key actions and mindsets we have discussed.

Think of this as your final checklist.

• Do Your Homework on Them: Before the interview, invest time in understanding the lab or company. Identify their recent projects or publications. Think about one or two ways your own research experience could connect with their current challenges or future goals. This initiative is a powerful differentiator.
• Prepare Your Story, Not Just Any Story: As we discussed under “Rule 3: Play to your strengths,” you must select one of your research projects to explain in detail. Choose the one you know by heart and are most passionate about. Be prepared to explain the motivation, the core challenges you solved, and why the work is important.
• Prepare for the “I Don’t Know” Moment: It is only human not to know everything. When you face a question you can’t answer, never just say “I don’t know” and fall silent. Instead, explain your thought process. Break the question down and articulate how you would try to solve it. Your thinking pattern is often more important than the final correct answer.
• Treat Q&A as a Discussion: Remember, the Q&A is not a strict defense of your work. Frame it as a scientific discussion among peers. When faced with criticism or a tough question, listen, acknowledge the insight, and discuss it constructively. This shows you are collaborative and can handle feedback, a vital research skill.
• Remember, You Are Also Judging the Fit: Finally, adopt the winning mindset. The interview is a two-way process. You are also evaluating if the role, the team, and the environment are a perfect fit for you. Prepare thoughtful questions to ask them at the end. In my interviews, asking about research challenges and expectations has always led to the most valuable conversations. Do not skip this final, crucial step.

Final Words

In this article, we covered first the different formats of research interviews, both in industry and academia. Next, we talked about the skillset interviewers are looking for. Finally, we talked about five principles that can help you build a winning mindset so that you can ace your research interview.

By internalizing these frameworks, you shift from being a candidate who answers questions to a future colleague who proposes solutions. Go prove you are the perfect fit.

I would love to hear your feedback and thoughts on it.