Downward Angle Icon An icon in the shape of a downward angle. Sandeep Rao; Sahil Gaba. Tara Larsen. Zubin Pratap; Corey Griffin. 5 of his jobs at BI Meta, Apple, Amazon, and Google share how they did their jobs. A software engineer at Google said he networked with other engineers to learn about their day jobs. A former Amazon assistant created an interview example based on leadership principles.
Getting your foot in the door at one of the Big Four Big Tech companies: Meta, Google, Apple, and Amazon can require years of training, expensive education, and many interviews. Some people apply over and over again over the course of years and are denied.
Business Insider spoke to five people who have worked at big tech companies about how they learned the skills and experience to land the job, and how they demonstrated those skills during interviews. Ta.
Corey Griffin talks about side hustles that demonstrate relevant skills in an interview with Apple
Corey Griffin dreamed of working in Big Tech, but felt he lacked the necessary educational background.
He studied software engineering while working in marketing and carved out a niche in the field of marketing engineering. Griffin started a media company, C3G Media, as a side hustle and launched several marketing products, including a teleprompter product called Speakflow.
Griffin applied for the Apple job four times after working as a software engineer at Rotten Tomatoes, Vox, and Shopify. Eventually, he got an interview in 2021.
However, he told Business Insider that he couldn't give details about some of his work during the interview because it's under an NDA. Instead, he talked about his side hustle, including Speak Flow.
“I was able to showcase my broad skillset through side projects such as graphic design, animation, marketing, and coding. I also had clients from a variety of industries, including the music industry and small technology clients.” He said.
Griffin took a job as a software engineer at Apple, where he worked for two years.
Tara Larsen knew every detail of Amazon's leadership policies when she applied for the job.
Tara Larsen landed a job as an executive assistant at Amazon after eight interviews.
She told BI that the interviewer asked behavioral questions based on Amazon's “Leadership Principles” (also known as LP).
Her advice to those interviewing at Amazon is to “be familiar with LP, keep it in mind when answering questions, and be prepared to tell your interviewer which leadership principles you most identify with.” Please stay.”
She says interviewees should avoid trying to guess which LP the interviewer wants to hear about for each question, and instead use the LP as a guide to indicate how they would approach the situation. I said that. Larsen only said at certain points in the interview which specific she was referring to the LP.
For example, she says: “…where she did a little bit of invention and simplification” or “…it reminds me of the LP, but to gain credibility because…” and “where she learned a thing or two about digging deep.”
Sahil Gaba studied cutting-edge software before becoming an Amazon software engineer
Sahil Gaba was working as a software engineer at a small fintech company but knew he wanted to work in big tech.
Gaba told BI that he felt he was not learning the cutting-edge technology he needed. He learned new technology and honed his interviewing skills in his spare time. Two years later, he landed a job as a software engineer at his Amazon.
Within 18 months of starting at Amazon, I had offers from Meta, Uber, and Google, and I accepted a job with a starting salary of $300,000.
Sandeep Rao worked at Apple and Meta after taking jobs he thought would give him credibility with big tech companies.
Sandeep Rao, a software engineer who has worked at Apple and Meta, started a low-paying job at Oracle in India in 2012, where he earned an annual salary of 850,000 rupees, or $15,000. was.
“I took this job to get my foot in the door at a major technology company and build credibility,” he told BI.
At Oracle, I applied to graduate school and was eventually accepted into Carnegie Mellon University's computer science graduate program.
“Graduate school was tough, but it was worth it because the doors opened,” Rao said. After graduating, he was able to get a job at Apple with his $115,000 salary.
Zubin Pratap networked with technology employees at conferences before joining Google
Zubin Pratap worked as a lawyer for more than a decade, but at the age of 38 he decided to move into the technology field. He told his BI that he had no science background and found it difficult to transition into a completely new industry.
Pratap focused on networking at conferences for engineers and developers and inviting potential collaborators for coffee.
By asking questions about what they did, he learned to “speak to engineers in their language,” which he said was “the biggest benefit” of BI.
He started working at a small software development company and a year and a half later got a job as a software engineer at Google. Before taking this role, he had been rejected by Google his fourth time.He networks with people who work within the company to gain insight into how things work within the company, and this
He said he took the time to talk to people within the company and seek their insights in order to land the role.
