How to get FAANG+ interview calls for technical roles.
Direct applications on Career portals have a very low success rate — Here’s what you can do instead
Applying for job positions sometimes works — and mostly doesn’t. Here are some ways you can optimize your time spent applying for roles.
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Not all job platforms are worth spending(or wasting) your time on. Below are some tips that can help you get the interview from your dream company :
Most Important: Create a good resume — try to use a single column, one page resume format. Anything too fancy doesn’t help your case. I’d rather see a boring but structured resume than a fancy but confusing one.
Best Platform — LinkedIn + Referrals.
- The best way — Hands down is to get a referral from a current employee — or better, reach out to a recruiter. More chances of this working if the person knows you or your field of work, or if you have a stellar profile. Think like this — I might consider referring an unknown person if their resume is really good.
- Ask from someone who can understand your resume: if you are cold DM-ing as a Backend Engineer, don’t ask a Frontend Engineer to refer you. Rather find Backend Engineers in that company to ask for a referral.
- Use LinkedIn’s easy apply feature for some job openings. Try to completely avoid career page applications as chances of getting noticed there are scarce.
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How to best leverage linkedIn :
- Step 0 : Turn on job alerts for the role you are interested in.
- Step 1 : Find a particular opening for a company, e.g., Data engineer at amazon.
- Step 2 : Send a connection request for few recruiters and 4–5 Data Engineers at amazon(With note attached regarding your work and referral request)
- Step 3 : Draft a letter highlighting why you are a good fit, along with your resume as PDF and the job ID you want to be referred for. Be crisp and concise.
- A sample letter might look like :
Hi ,
Hope you are doing well.
I’m Currently working at ____ as a Big data / Software engineer, would you be willing to refer me for Data Engineering positions at your company ?
Also attaching my resume if that’s helpful.
About my current role at xxx : Working on Spark + Scala + Python on a data lake in a devOps & Agile environment. Also familiar with Data Analysis using Jupyter notebooks.
Thanks & Regards,
Jake Peralta | NoiceAndToit@gmail.com
Other platforms Ranked from best to worst success rate :
- Naukri.com : Especially if your last working day is coming close, you’ll get a lot of calls from recruiters. Use the free service only and ensure that your activity rate is close to 100% on the portal(Visit the platform every few days).
- Instahyre/Hirist : These platforms also might get you an interview. Usually you can get offers from good startups.
- Other sites that you can create your profile on are :
- Shine.com
- cutshort.io
- TopHire
- Angellist
- Monster Jobs
- Indeed(had little to no success here)
One final note — Getting noticed by big tech companies might be a bit difficult, especially if you don’t have experience. In that case, join a startup first, learn from there and later join your dream company :)
Remember to keep your hopes high — keep working hard and you’ll be surprised to see how far you’ve come. Hoping to hear positive stories from your side :)