Cracking new grad hiring process PDF

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Cracking new grad hiring process.

This guide is written based on the experience from 2020-2021 hiring season. All content in this guide is published only for free personal use. Written and published by Raduan. Thanks to everyone who kindly reviewed this guide. Consider sharing this guide with students from your university.

Table of Contents

Introduction What this guide is about? This guide's one, and the only intention is to help final-year students land their dream job at software companies in well-known tech hubs worldwide. During this small guide, we will go through every step of the process and discuss what you should do to have multiple offers from top-level companies.

What this guide isn't about? This guide isn't about any specific company. While the author's experience is limited to the companies he interviewed with, he believes that this guide's strategies are applicable within possibly every company out there. You won't see any particular questions asked in real interviews. An author has signed NDAs with multiple companies and doesn't really believe that it will help you in any possible way.

For whom this guide might be useful? First of all, it might be useful for 3rd-year Computer Science students willing to find a job abroad after college or university. Or for final-year students who are just starting the job searching process or already interviewing with companies. Note that some of the chapters in this guide are limited to my own experience. They may not apply to your case. For example, if you are already in the US, you might find the chapter about process and application useless. That's because my experience is limited only to companies within Asia and Europe.

Why you need to read this guide? There is a misconception among a lot of students that to get a job at Google or at Facebook or at any other big tech company, you need: to be a genius; to have past internships at these companies; to be a top performer in your school; to be Elon Musk; And a ton of other misbeliefs. While yes, it would be great if you have a prior internship at Google or if you are a prodigy, but it's absolutely not a necessary thing. And in this guide, I will demonstrate that by explaining every step of the process.

Why you need to apply for new graduate jobs abroad? I believe that it's a unique opportunity for students. You gain hands-on experience from renowned top-tier organizations. Maybe you even don't have such organizations in your region. Even if you love your home country that much, think in the prospect of 5 to 10 years. How can you produce value for your home country? Do you see yourself just going to another mainstream job out of college as everyone else does? Or you see yourself gaining experience abroad which you can't find in your home country and then coming back to a better position and as a higher valued specialist. I know that these subjects definitely differ from person to person but here are just a few thoughts you might want to consider while thinking about starting this long journey.

Why you don't need to apply for new graduate jobs abroad? Well, you see, everyone is considering life abroad is greater than our current one. But generally, it's not true. First of all, there is no ideal country out there. Secondly, there are a lot of things you need to face while relocating to a new country. Finally, everyone thinks that they will instantly get millions of dollars and live like a rich person when they move abroad. Well, that's not true at all. New grads are the lowest full-time level at the company, and many companies do not pay that much to them. Yes, you will most likely get an offer above average if you are going to top-tier companies, such as Google, Facebook, Citadel, Jane Street. But keep in mind that you are relocating. And that you will need to have much more expenses out there than you currently have. All in all, if you want to pursue money and that's your end goal, I don't think that it's the best choice to spend time applying, preparing, and doing all of that steps. In the end, you might get an offer that you won't be willing to take.

Few words about the author I am a final year undergrad at HSE, Moscow. I've done 1 internship at Yandex and have 1.5 years of experience in a seed-level startup(while studying). In fall 2020 I've been able to land five offers from big tech companies worldwide(TikTok Singapore, Microsoft Dublin, Bloomberg London and others) and one offer from some random company in Tokyo, Japan. It's been a long journey to get these offers. During it, I've done around70 real technical interviewsand about80mock interviews. By sharing my experience and knowledge with other people, I hope I will be able to inspire at least one person. Which will already be enough for me to be happy.

Finally, one year ago, when I was just starting, I have set a goal of having 30 offers by the end of the year. While ultimately I haven't reached that goal, I hope to achieve it through you(yes, you ) by writing and sharing this guide.

A quick note before we start In this guide, I tried my best to share the knowledge I have. I don't like merely rephrasing information and posting it as my own. I believe that it is dishonesty with readers and disrespect to the original authors. When my perspective is described in some blog posts or articles, I will add links instead of writing a large chapter. I want to respect the authors who have already done a great job by helping many other people out there and me.

How does the process look like? What is a new graduate role at a software company? Essentially it's pretty much the default junior software engineer role. Some companies have specific boot camps for new grads, after which they decide which team to join. In contrast, others just hire for a particular team or perform the teammatching process after all interviews. You will be working along with all other engineers. You will have the same responsibilities as well as hires from the industry. So nothing extraordinary here.

Requirements for a new graduate role at a software company The bar for new graduate engineers may vary a lot. Not every company is a Google. Not every company hires a software engineer and expects some decent-produced software after a year or two. A lot of companies hire for grad roles based on the current needs of a business. While there are "generalist" roles at most companies for grads, some others prefer to have specific openings for frontend/backend/mobile/ml roles. This is your chance to apply to your field. That way, you will possess more possibilities to succeed in the screening process rather than after applying to a generalist role. Mostly, low requirements in terms of skills are for FAANG-like companies. They do not expect grads to have any working experience and just want you to be good at your school and have side projects. However, companies of a smaller size tend to prefer grads with previous work experience and industry-level knowledge. With that being said, it is still possible to get a new grad job even if you don't have any industry knowledge yet.

Typical process Typically, the process looks like that: Your application [Optional]

Online assessment

[Optional]

Phone interview with someone from the recruitment team

0-N

Technical phone screens

Onsite interviews Offer negotiation & Signing the offer letter

The process differs from company to company, but the most popular format is: technical phone screen - onsite - offer. Also, there is a probability of having multiple phone screens. It may be a standard hiring practice. Or you might not showcase optimal performance. If so, the company needs to conduct one more one-hour interview before deciding whether to pass you to the onsite or not.

Applying to non-new graduate positions as a recent college graduate Let's face it: very few companies have new graduate positions because hiring recent grads is very cost-inefficient(in Europe). However, many companies have open roles for their regular positions where you can find openings without strict requirements for your years of experience. The response rate on such applications might be low because sometimes they do not mention a position's level but await someone with 5 or more years of experience. I recommend applying to such positions, but I encourage you to not really waste much effort unless you have an excellent match for the role. I have been able to proceed in the process with two companies for a regular software engineer position(one Series C Berlin startup and Snap London). Please note that such roles are not like new graduate roles and require immediate hire. Meaning that if you want to apply in September, you need to start in November-January. Such positions are typically open for a specific team, meaning that the role might be filled before you finish your interviews. For example, after I had 2 successful phone interviews with Snap, a recruiter reached out to me and said they have already filled the role.

How to apply Types of applications To start the process, you need to let the company know about you in some way. Generally, there are 3 ways of doing so: Apply directly on the company's website Apply through referral Be found by a recruiter In an ideal world, you want a recruiter to reach out to you and just kick-off the process. But that's not an easy thing to do. You must stand out by something. For example, have an interesting open-source project. Or be in some rating of competitive developers. I can't tell you much about this since I have never been contacted by any recruiters besides recruiting agencies. Next is applying through referral. What essentially is a referral – it is some person in the company you are applying for who knows you and can vouch for you. Right now, referrals are effortless to find from big companies, such as Google or Facebook. I would say that in such sort of companies, it doesn't mean a lot, whether you have it or not. On the other hand, referrals for middle-sized companies or startups play a considerable role. Because when someone can vouch for you, the recruiter will most likely skip the screening process and send OA or schedule a phone call. The last option is to apply directly. You might think that applying directly to the job posting is a bad idea, and no one will really look at your application. But in fact, it's not right for every company out there, especially one with good HR practices. Good companies are hungry for talent and have their own HR departments. They will most likely go through every application to ensure that they didn't miss any suitable candidates. So, how does a typical application form looks like? It looks like that: Full name Email Phone University Resume Some optional questions

In fact, 95% of your application doesn't matter(just sometimes, we will discuss that in a bit). The most important thing is your resume. Let's find out how to make the best possible resume out there.

Making a kick-ass resume The main goal of a resume is to sell yourself. But how do you sell yourself basically? You tell what you've been able to achieve so far. Not what you've done, but what you've achieved. This is very important. I don't want to get into many details here because everyone has already written great posts on "how to build a resume". I will just leave few links that will help you to build the best possible resume out there. Best resume builder –https://www.overleaf.com/ Best resume template –https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/softwareengineer-resume/gqxmqsvsbdjf Best resume guide that literallyboostedmy resume by 1000% – https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/writing-a-killer-software-engineeringresume-b11c91ef699d/ Best action words to use in a resume –https://www.indeed.com/careeradvice/resumes-cover-letters/action-verbs-to-make-your-resume-stand-out Video on how to proofread your resume(on Russian) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPmowXXCWPs

Where to apply? Now you know how a typical application looks and how to build a kick-ass resume. It's time to find out where to find a job posting. First of all, I guess you already know many companies that you would like to work for: Google, Facebook, or maybe even Amazon(please read stories on teamblind.com before going to Amazon ). However, you are probably okay if you will get a high-paying job from other cool companies out there as well, but you don't really know them yet. The first thing I encourage you to do is find a list of software companies in the area you are interested in. It will give you a sense of what companies are out there in the tech scene, as well as some other insights. Good starting points for your search:

https://www.glassdoor.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/ https://jumpstart.me/ Besides that, remember that you are not the only person in search right now. Thousands of students worldwide are doing the same thing, trying to get a job out of college. In previous years someone was always making a website on which they placed interesting roles for new graduates. This year the most comprehensive thing I've seen was on Github. You can check it out here:https://github.com/pittcsc/NewGrad-2021. Shoutout to guys that have been contributing during the hiring season. After you know what companies you are interested in, you might want to monitor them. I would suggest a few solutions for that: Have a cron job that will perform parsing of careers pages and tell you when the new role is added to the website. It's a straightforward and convenient way to stay up-to-date regularly. I had such a thing for few companies on my list, and for some of them, it really paid off because I was one of the first to notice them. Sign up for regular alerts from Glassdoor and LinkedIn. While searching by yourself is a good starting point to understand, what companies are out there, you will never know when these companies will post a job opening. However, after setting a specific alert it will be effortless for you to get new job posts daily, delivered right to your inbox.

Few words about U.S companies In 2020 Mr. Trump introduced a ban for work visas(H1-B) for a year, so I didn't bother myself applying to US positions. Right now, something might change with Biden being a new president, so I recommend doing your research and not wasting an opportunity if there is such. I would say that most likely, if you are an international student outside of the US, even if an H1-B visa is not banned, it will be very hard. A FAANG level company won't sponsor it for you because they have many candidates in the US and probably they have an office somewhere outside of the US. However, there was a case when a smaller size company verbally stated that they will sponsor H1-B for a new grad role for me. But, Covid-19 happened .

Tips & Tricks Apply early

This is very important. Many new graduate job openings are followed by the next sentence: "Applications are processed on a rolling basis", meaning that the headcount is limited, and if you are slow, you will lose your opportunity. Here are some rough dates of when you can start looking for other companies: Europe – somewhere in the middle of July or even the beginning of August. The most immense amount of open jobs will be in September-October. Asia – depends a lot on the country. Since university in Japan is finishing in Spring, as far as I know, you can start looking for jobs in February/March/April. For example, Google Japan had openings for their new grad program from January. US – I would say that it is the same as in Europe. Many guys get returning intern offers in August and probably start their interview process with all other companies.

Apply to a lot of companies

I have applied to200+companies during this job search. Yes, that's a very, very big number. However, even after applying to 200+ companies, I have received any reply from about 60 to 80. Then about 20~ proceeded to Online Assessments. And about 10 decided to schedule a phone call. The biggest mistake I made here was that I was applying for literally every possible job out there. If it had some match with my experience, I still applied because I tried to get any interviews. However, with all that process in mind, I definitely can say that you need to apply to jobs that match your background for at least 50 to 70 percent. With that number and a good resume, you can hope that you will get a reply. Please note that I was applying mostly for non-new graduate positions that required some industry level experience. I highly encourage you to do the same for the sake of two things: experience in interviewing and A/B testing of your resume.

Apply to uninteresting companies first

It's obvious that if you get an offer from a company you are not interested in, you will just gain confidence because you already have an offer behind your back and experience passing onsite interviews. It's not a big deal if you will be rejected from the company you weren't interested in, and it's okay if you get an offer and then just decline it.

Hacks for applying fast

Different services allow you to apply to the job opening—a couple of good ones:greenhouseandlever. The application is kind of easy and takes from 30 seconds to a minute. There is also a company's career portal. For example, Google and Facebook have their own portals with job openings. However, there are a few nightmare websites on which your application process will be like hell. First of all, it's Workday. Worst experience ever. One application takes about 5 to 10 minutes because you need to register(for each company you need to register new account!!!), upload all the data, correct all mistakes being done by ATS, etc. I highly recommend checking out this tool:https://github.com/federicoterzi/espanso. It made my application process much faster and easier. If the company is very dull for you and you don't really want to work there, don't waste more than 2 minutes on your application. If it's your favorite company, you will go through everything(even this Workday...) just to apply.

Track your progress

As I've said previously, I have applied to 200+ companies this season. And it would be unreal without tracking every application I have made. You want to have leverage over the process. I personally usedNotionfor this. This is what I've built:

Few interesting things to highlight here: As I've said earlier – apply to uninteresting companies first. So what I've made is a list of 813 companies and rated them on how much I am willing to work for them and other specific requirements for a job. Status tracking. It's easier to keep track of everything while knowing the current status of the process. Location. It was beneficial for filtering. Sometimes I was just skipping US jobs because I didn't want to even bother myself applying because of the horrible visa process. I recommend you create a table of companies for yourself. By trial and error method, you will find the tracking which will work best for you.

Apply multiple times

The resume screening process is random. Honestly, it is. The person who will review your resume might have a bad day or a bad mood, so he will reject you even if you have a killer resume.

But, there is good news. You can apply one more time. Most times, it won't work, but sometimes it will. Suppose you've been rejected on the screening process or haven't heard in a month or two. In that case, I recommend trying to re-apply for the job opening if it's still available. First of all, you might have changed your resume since then. Also, you might have decided to write a better answer for application questions. Finally, you are just trying your luck, and maybe another recruiter will have a different opinion regarding your application. But it won't work every time. Unfortunately, some systems prevent you from applying multiple times for the same role. It's still worth trying, though. Some companies also perfo...