As Sylendran Arunagiri considered moving from India to the US to pursue a master’s degree, some friends and mentors advised him to delay his move. They warned that the US tech job market had become too challenging.
Arunagiri’s goal was to move to the US in late 2023, begin a master’s program in product management at Carnegie Mellon University, and land a Big Tech internship for the summer of 2024. He hoped this would be a stepping stone toward landing an AI-related role, ideally at Nvidia, his “dream company” because of its central role in the AI technologies he’d long wanted to work on.
However, there were several things working against him. For one, the US tech hiring landscape was already creating headaches for job seekers. Openings had plummeted from highs reached a year earlier, and industry layoffs were increasing competition for available roles.
Additionally, Arunagiri had grown accustomed to the job market in India, where he earned a bachelor’s degree and an MBA from top institutions that he said relied on structured campus placement programs to funnel many students directly into jobs. But from what he’d heard, the US was very different. Job fairs were often more like networking events than recruiting opportunities.
“You’re completely on your own,” said the 30-year-old, who now lives in San Jose.
Arunagiri is among the many job seekers who have struggled to navigate a US hiring landscape that’s become more challenging in recent years. Amid economic uncertainty, the early effects of generative AI adoption, and a broader push to streamline operations, US businesses are now hiring at one of the slowest rates since 2013.
Still, some people have managed to break through in a challenging market. Arunagiri shared how he pursued his goal of working at Nvidia — a company he described as his dream employer — and offered his top advice for other job seekers.
Striking out on Nvidia
Many of the tech companies Arunagiri was targeting had conducted summer internship interviews the previous fall, so he began applying before moving to the US. After sending out many applications, he landed an interview with Nvidia in November 2023.
Arunagiri said the interview process went so well that he stopped applying to other internships. But after moving to the US and completing his final interview in February, he learned that he wouldn’t be getting the role — which left him scrambling to find another internship.
“I had to start from scratch, but by then many of the applications had dried out,” he said
Arunagiri was able to land an AI product manager internship based in India at the tech company Informatica. However, that summer, he found it difficult to stop thinking about what went wrong during his interview process with Nvidia — and began setting his sights on eventually landing a full-time role with the company.
A second chance at Nvidia
Upon reflection, Arunagiri suspected that his final Nvidia interview may have doomed him. He said he was lower energy than usual because he was feeling sick that day, and that he’d been hesitant to postpone it out of fear that the opportunity would be filled in the meantime. In hindsight, he said that decision was likely a mistake.
“I came off as a dull candidate, but I’m usually energetic and conversational,” he said. “I should have probably postponed it to a day that I was feeling better.”
Arunagiri decided to reach out to an HR professional from Nvidia to get insight into where he fell short, and they agreed to jump on a call with him. While they didn’t provide specific insights into his candidacy, he said they recommended he try to connect with people at Nvidia in current roles, including hiring managers and interns, to get insight into the kinds of projects they were working on and how he could better align his profile.
He eventually connected with about five Nvidia interns, who he said provided valuable insights. Those conversations helped shape the personal AI-related projects he began pursuing and sharing on LinkedIn in hopes of standing out.
After the summer, Arunagiri dove back into the job search, eager to land a role before he graduated in December 2024. He knew that if he didn’t land a job within 90 days after graduation, his F-1 visa restrictions would force him to return to India.
In September 2024, he submitted a cold application for a technical product marketing role in agentic AI at Nvidia —a role he described as his “dream AI role” at his dream company. He was asked to interview starting in October, and around the same time, he was also invited to interview for a more junior product management role at Microsoft.
Read more about people who’ve found themselves at a corporate crossroads
Advice for other job seekers
In December, with his graduation looming later that month, Arunagiri received offers from Nvidia and Microsoft within days of each other. Given that Nvidia was his dream employer, the role checked a lot of his boxes, and the pay was higher than Microsoft’s, he said the decision was fairly easy — and he accepted Nvidia’s offer. He said that so far, working at Nvidia has been “everything that I’ve dreamed of.”
Arunagiri believes that his LinkedIn presence helped him stand out. During the interview process, he said, the hiring manager told him that he’d reviewed his LinkedIn profile and noticed the projects he’d been working on, including small experiments with new generative AI tools and models he’d shared publicly.
He has a few pieces of advice for job seekers. First, he said, time management is key, particularly because applying for jobs and connecting with people can be time-consuming. Second, he said, never compare your job search journey to anyone else’s, since a variety of factors can influence how it plays out.
Rather than quietly applying and networking, he recommends sharing tangible projects publicly — such as posting about AI tools you’ve explored and linking to projects on LinkedIn or a personal website — so hiring managers can see your work.
“You need to find something that sets you apart from others,” he said.
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