Feeling lost/desperate on this career path and wanted to crowdsource some advice. I had a pretty non traditional career path, I started with a 1099 commission only pyramid scheme gig and moved on from that pretty quickly into an AE at a small startup. Did well there and landed at HPE selling storage/servers/networking + software and did really, really well over about 3 years. I interviewed at every major tech company multiple times (prob over 100 interviews) and got passed on every time. My next gig was a miss and I was out in 9 months, the only gig I could get after that was Riverbed where I'm still at, watching the company swirl the toilet and lay off most of its staff as it heads into bankruptcy. I'm constantly improving my knowledge, getting sales certifications, technical certifications, general assembly, college courses, you name it. I've tried everything to get my foot in the door at a stable organization, from cold applying, to external recruiters, to hitting up managers on DMs. I just cannot break in. During the HPE job, I thought it was only a matter of time before I landed something great. Now my career is going drastically downhill and I'm still missing interviews at the AWS/MSFT/Cisco/Googles of the tech world. Dream companies are MSFT/Cisco/IBM/Palo Alto, market leaders with legacy technology and long term stability. Not sure what to do at this point. Do I: 1. Get MBA/Comp sci masters to break into the above companies 2. Figure out a way to switch to SE and break into AE roles down the line 3. Switch career paths entirely (blue collar trades) 4. Keep trying what I'm doing and work on interviewing skills I'd be willing to move literally anywhere to get in the door at one of my dream companies, that's how desperate I am to get this ship on the right path. I'm willing to take any course/certification to get my foot in the door. Anyone have any advice or any referrals? I've asked a dozen hiring managers for mentorship and they all just ghost me.
FWIW I have 15-20 active apps going on both MSFT/CISCO. Can't even get a phone screen at MSFT and cant get past the phone screen at Cisco.
Go back to HPE?
You need to make the situation more clear. What is your exact current TC, YOE, last 12-24 months of performance. If you’ve suffered multiple rejections from big tech in the last few years, you might need to cool down a bit. If you really are passionate about getting that Microsoft role down the line, look at startups or less competitive companies. You can use websites like repvue to get a better idea of the landscape. Also, how are you applying? For a company like AWS or Google, cold applying is often not enough. You need to seriously network, get referrals, talk to hiring managers, recruiters, etc. Prospect into companies you want to work at like you do in your job. Good luck
Exact TC is 183k. Last two gigs have been poor, lasted under a year with a pretty large gap in between (8 mos). I'm not dead set on big tech but that's where my three most successful years were. I still apply and get interviews at smaller tech cos (Nutanix, Pure Storage, Redis, Juniper, Cohesity, etc). I'll take anything over what I have now. Applying is a mix of cold applying, DMing hiring managers, external recruiters, etc. All have been successful getting me interviews. I've built a big network into IBM but every time a hiring manager wants to hire me there's always a stakeholder that shoots it down. Final rounds/loops I've missed: IBM x 4 SAP x 2 Vmware x 3 Cisco x 3 AWS x 1 Google x 1 Microsoft x 2 So I'm getting close, like final two candidates close. Just cannot get over the hump for basically 3-4 years now and settling for what I can get.
It's sad because it was once a promising career, I've been one "yes" away from my career taking off but since the COVID misstep I haven't been able to right the ship. I really had no idea that one bad gig/mistake could cost me my whole career.
Big tech isn’t all that great tbh. The best culture/comp combo is in fast-growing mature startups to mid-size public SaaS companies. Think Confluent, Databricks, Snowflake, MongoDB, Splunk, Samsara, CrowdStrike, etc. If you want to end up in big tech long term those are great places to lateral from.
Missed twice at Splunk, once at Databricks. Snowflake I had a conversation didn't go anywhere. I'm not ruling anything out and I'm not 100% on big tech, I just want something where I have a chance at hitting my number.
Two 20-year tech sellers who have gone on long runs at Salesforce, IBM, Box & Career-builder created this podcast series to close the mentorship gap. Hope it helps. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/winning-the-interview/id1696460807
Thank you
Oof. Can you run through the years you were in sales, product type, and percent of quota each year? Why did you leave HPE when things were going well? Did you ever get any feedback from those sales interviews during that round on why they were passing?
Sure thing. HPE had me on entry level comp plan 160k OTE. Was averaging about a quarter million a year well into accelerators every year. Was looking to get a higher base and COVID hit so 80k base wasn't cutting it when all my buying had frozen. Always been in infrastructure hardware/software. I think missing 25+ interviews at Cisco/Vmware/MSFT/SAP/Dell/AWS killed my career as well as having to leave HPE during COVID, had to settle for very risky gigs. No one ever gives you feedback, no one seems to GAF about me in this world.
So the last time you hit quota was 2019? Am I reading that correctly?