> Is it better to get any job than keep searching for the job I'd be most suited for? When you're first starting out? Yes, absolutely. The job for which you'

> Is it better to get any job than keep searching for the job I'd be most suited for? When you're first starting out? Yes, absolutely. The job for which you'd be most suited (however that's defined) will in all likelihood toss your resume into the nearest trash can without some actual work experience on it. > Who are the best people/kinds of firms to reach out to when the industry is slowing hiring? The more boring-looking, the better. You say you're about to be a PhD in AI? Find some small/medium business with leadership whose eyes gloss over at the mere mention of "neural nets" or "deep learning" or what have you, get into some boring technician or analyst role, and start using those fancy AI chops to blow their expectations for the role out of the water. If they don't rapidly promote you with the newfound success they're seeing, then you're in a much better position to pursue something that actually corresponds to your degree, with a resume item along the lines of "used machine learning to classify inventory by predicted velocity and rearrange inventory locations, improving warehouse picking throughput by 115%" or somesuch.