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Tips & tricks to take your career to the next level

I did well in tech rounds, did not get offer

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We talked to some recent SWE, PM candidates & Technical recruiters (Thank you for your time !) and we could see a clear pattern where some technically solid candidates who had done a lot of amazing tech work could not clear the loops for FAANG companies like Google and Facebook. Why? In short – You did not do as well as you thought in the behavioral rounds.

Let’s start with a common Assumption/ Mistake: Since you did a lot of work, and you clearly understand what the work was, you feel that you are good and covered on the behavioral interviews.
Wrong! You need practice on how to phrase it, which words to use which not (so that you can amplify the right signals), how to up-level and down level it appropriately. This practice needs to be with professionals who can coach & guide you, NOT with peers – as that might work to your disadvantage in giving you false sense of confidence. Below we reveal our simple 5 step approach for the behavioral interviews.

  1. Research: Do your research on the Company, the specific job, your interviewer(s). Your best friends on this step are going to be Google, Bing, Glassdoor, and company’s social media pages. Same way, the LinkedIn page of your interviewers are going to help you understand a lot about them.
  2. Introspection: Do your research on yourself. Why should they hire you? How do your goals and values align with that of the company? What specific skills make you a great fit for the specific job? Write down your core competencies with very specific examples where you demonstrated them.
  3. Interview Expectations: Understand from the recruiter what to expect in the interviews. Their goal is to get you placed so utilize that mutual alignment.
  4. Prepare: At least 5 stories in the S.T.A.R format. The stories should showcase you Impact with the metrics. E.g. My work led to a X% improvement in ‘xyz’ metric leading to a net increase of XX in this vector. Most candidates we talked to thought they had it, but either the impact was missing or the amount of time they spent on each was dis-proportionate.
  5. Practice: Mock interviews provide you with an environment where you are able to word the stories right, get judged on the quality and format without getting penalized. You get expert feedback in the end, with written notes. It makes a world of difference.

Don’t forget to have a few questions ready for the interviewers. Our seasoned mock interviewers are standing by to help you!

Setting up for success when working from home

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First and a more “seemingly obvious” thing is to have an efficient setup at home, this not only includes:
A. a comfortable furniture.
B. a desktop / laptop that has all the apps which you may need for your work.
C. a stable internet connection (preferably a high speed 802.11ac router and a separate high speed modem). Our personal experience tells us that a two in one model OR rental hardware from your cable company generally doesn’t cut it.
D. a printer – this may be completely optional but comes in very handy at times.

Second and a less obvious trap is lack of visibility – When at work we often bump into each other (break rooms, cafeteria’s etc, where a simple question like ‘what are you working on these days?’ is enough to get the visibility of your current work to your partners / stakeholders. When working from home, these opportunities suddenly vanish. Which is why it is all the more important to make your team / your manager / your partners aware of your short term goals, current projects, long term goals. Error on the side of over-communication than under. Make people clearly aware of what you are working on, why – and more importantly allow them to provide you with feedback. Listen, and listen patiently.

Watch out our future blogs on this where we will talk about a lot more on working from home, and give practical tips on keeping your sanity in these insane times.

Getting noticed by the recruiters

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Your LinkedIn Profile

Let’s start with your LinkedIn profile. There are three logical steps: Discover, Click, Contact. 

  1. Discover: You need to show up in their search results.
    1. Easiest way here is to have the right keywords sprinkled around in the right sections. If you are good at something, or are seeking a certain kind of position, make sure to have that highlighted.
  2. Your profile needs to be “clickable” / attractive.
    1. To do this, Make sure to have a high quality image which has your face, and no one else in it. Image should preferably be high resolution, with full smiling face showing.
    2. Make sure to have a great headline, what makes you top of your game.
  3. Once clicked, it needs to “reel them in”.
    1. Have a fully filled out objective, up to date education, current employment, and past experiences.
      1. No fillers & fluff. Talk about your impact, and get straight to it. Example: It’s much better to say “Designed Product recommendation engine” Instead of “Passionate & self driven team player worked closely on the engine which recommends related products to customers”
      2. Use bullets or numbers instead of Long paragraphs.
      3. Be concise in writing your technical skills. E.g. Python 2 and Python 3 should just be Python. Just like “Microsoft word, Microsoft excel, Microsoft Office 365, Word Online etc can all be clubbed as “Microsoft productivity suite”
    2. Have good recommendations.

Your Google presence

Search yourself on Google and see what shows up, your first few results do not showcase how you want recruiters and potential employers to see you, then this is something that needs to be fixed !
One easy & free way to fix it is to get those unwanted results buried in second or third page by creating new content that takes the prime spot. It’s easier than you think – Start writing up a few blogs / notes / posts on sites which shows results on Google sooner than your own website. Start with Facebook / Twitter / Medium / Quora or other sites. Remember: those sites should have your full name in your profile! 

Being pro-active

Reach out yourself to the recruiters with a one or two line polite message asking them how they are doing, and then a line about you, typically – which has your elevator pitch!
Get referred / introduced – Ask your friends and contacts to see if they know someone in that dream company of yours’. You can also do this yourself via advanced LinkedIn search. More on this in our next blog!

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