Cracking the Tech Career: Insider Advice on Landing a Job at Google, Microsoft, Apple, or any Top Tech Company

3Getting in the Door

Think companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and Google are getting tons of great applicants? Think again. “Hiring managers at Amazon are spending so much time recruiting these days that they barely have time to actually, well, manage,” one technical program manager at Amazon told me. Employees from other top companies echoed similar concerns:

• “There aren't enough good engineers in the United States. Period. We're like vultures fighting over what little there is to eat.” (Apple employee)
• “We're always hiring great talent. Always.” (Google employee)
• “It's not that we don't get enough good candidates. It's that we just don't know who they are.” (Facebook employee)

It's true. While you're banging down their door to get in, recruiters are running around trying to find you.

You might be able to just stand still, dutifully submitting your resume online. With a bit of luck and an outstanding resume, they just might bump into you and ring you up. Most candidates, however, find that they must get a bit more creative.

The Black Hole: Online Job Submission

Candidates call it a black hole for a reason. You drop your resume in and it essentially disappears, never to be heard from again. Normally.

But it happens. Kari, a financial analyst at Amazon, applied through Amazon's website and promptly received one of those e-mails—“Blah, blah, blah…we'll keep your resume on file.” And they did, and later offered her a job. Philip got his job at Bloomberg LP through applying ...