How to increase your chances of landing interviews
Aashir Khan

Aashir Khan @justaashir

About: Head of Product at Kiwify

Location:
Sukkur , Sindh , Pakistan
Joined:
Sep 15, 2019

How to increase your chances of landing interviews

Publish Date: Feb 23 '20
97 11

Every developer, designer or marketer thinks of getting a job at well-known and huge organizations like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn or Netflix, but it’s very hard to reach these companies for the interview even if you have all the skills. Today I’m sharing ways to land interviews at these organizations.

  1. Cold Email Strategy
  2. Get Referrals
  3. Personal Projects
  4. Resume Tips

1. Contacts & Cold email strategy

Check your contacts

First of all, check your contact list. It sounds kind of weird but it’s been the most successful way. You'll definitely find someone with a job at Google or Facebook or maybe someone had connections with recruiters before.
Reach out to your alumni! They will tell you the honest way to get the job, how they got into it and maybe they can help you (refer you).

Cold email strategy

It's not recommended, but sometimes this can work like a charm. This is how it works:

  • Some employees of the company will post about the job opening, on Twitter and LinkedIn.
  • You should comment, DM, and email them and try to showcase your resume and projects to them.

2. Get referrals

This makes sure that your resume will reach the recruiters. But what if you don’t know anyone at a large tech firm and don’t have connections?

This site offers employee referrals to top companies such as Google and Facebook. I like how developers screen your resume, instead of recruiters who may not be technical and usually look for keywords/big names.

3. Personal Projects

If you have some popular personal projects, or you ran up a small community, then this can heavily increase the chances to land the interview.
This confirms that you’re creative enough, have the skill, and how to manage yourself. Try posting your projects, ideas, and every other thing you want the recruiters to see on your website, Twitter, blog.
Check out my popular DEV post on this over here:

4. Resume Tips

Don’t add every other job you’ve done in the past

There is no need to add every job you’ve done in the past. Only mention the jobs you’ve been doing in the last 10 years.

Make it simple and easy to read.

Your resume should be simple and straightforward. Employers have a minimal amount of time to read your resume, so make sure it’s easily readable. Choose a clean professional font.

Keep it to a Page

It’s my personal opinion and by this source, I highly recommend that you should consider a one-page resume other than using two or more pages.

Summary

Google is just like any other company out there, but it’s company culture and lots of competition have made it hard to get a job there.

My Advice
Try again and again, get referrals, send emails, make personal projects and make a perfect resume, one day you'll get the opportunity.

Quick Links

Follow me, cause I want more followers.

Cover Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Comments 11 total

  • Manav
    ManavFeb 23, 2020

    Please don't take it the wrong way, but please try to limit your advices to things you're actually experienced at.

    • Aashir Khan
      Aashir KhanFeb 23, 2020

      Yes, I appreciate your feedback very much, and that's why I didn't write anything about how'll be the interview process, and how to pass the interview to get a job.

      I just wrote some general things, which can work in every niche.

      • Good Resume
      • Personal Projects
      • Referrals
      • Cold Email Strategy (I use it myself)
      • thelongrun
        thelongrunFeb 23, 2020

        The headline of your post is misleading. It implies that you have yourself been successful at landing an interview at Google and are now being generous enough to share some tips with your less fortunate peers.

        As things stand, it's just clickbait.

        • Aashir Khan
          Aashir KhanFeb 23, 2020

          I'm not saying 'How I landed an interview at Google'.

          But this is true, that I should not be talking about these tips...

          • thelongrun
            thelongrunFeb 23, 2020

            The funny thing is that this is a genuinely well-written and useful post. If the headline was 'How to increase your chances of landing job interviews', most readers would have a positive reaction towards it.

            This Google bit is actually detracting from a nice, readable, actionable post :-)

            • Aashir Khan
              Aashir KhanFeb 23, 2020

              Ok let me remove the google then 😁😉

  • Rémy 🤖
    Rémy 🤖Feb 23, 2020

    I think the best way to land a job at Google is buy a satanic bible, pray the devil and burn virgins on a stick. Apparently it's similar for Facebook but I don't dare write it in here.

    • Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard
      Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ FayardFeb 24, 2020

      Honestly the best way to handle companies that have a broken byzantine hiring process that rejects tons of good candidates ist simple:

      Do not apply at those companies.

      You will waste lots of time, feel like shit, and what is the upside for you considering that you could apply instead at companies that do this better?


      But what is the second best way if you really want to work there?

      Consider that there are two separate questions:

      Do you think you would be good at the job itself? If not, don't apply.

      If you think you would be good at the job itself, then realize that lots of good people have been rejected for dumb reasons.

      rejected.us/

      I like personally how

      • Chris Wanstrath, co-founder of GitHub was not good enough to work at Yahoo
      • Kyle Simpson, the author of You don't know JS was rejected at Facebook because he didn't know enough JS

      So be cynical and consider the hiring process as an obstacle you should work around.

  • Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard
    Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ FayardFeb 24, 2020

    An additional advice from me:

    To build your stunning one page resume, don't waste time trying to make something that looks good in Microsoft Word. Instead be a lazy programmer and rely au automation:

    • Git clone this repository
    • Edit resume/data.yml
    • $ npm install && npm run dev
    • Open localhost:8080/home in your browser

    GitHub logo salomonelli / best-resume-ever

    👔 💼 Build fast 🚀 and easy multiple beautiful resumes and create your best CV ever! Made with Vue and LESS.


    Markdownify
    best-resume-ever

    Travis badge

    👔 💼 Build fast 🚀 and easy multiple beautiful resumes and create your best CV ever

    Made with Vue and LESS.



    Prerequisite

    1. It is required to have Node.js with version 8.5.0 or higher. To see what version of Node.js is installed on your machine type the following command in the terminal:
    node -v
    
    1. If you do not have installed Node.js in your machine then go to this link in order to install node.

    How to use

    1. Clone this repository.
    git clone https://github.com/salomonelli/best-resume-ever.git
    
    1. Go to the cloned directory (e.g. cd best-resume-ever).

    2. Run npm install.

    3. Customize your resume in the resume/ directory: edit your data data.yml and replace the default profile-picture id.jpg with your picture. Rename your picture as id.jpg and copy it in the resume/ directory.

    4. Preview resumes with npm run dev. The command will start a server instance and listen on port 8080. Open (localhost:8080/home





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