I've applied to about 30 companies in the past three months (some with and some without a referral) and haven't secured an interview call yet. I'm 36, have 8 YOE in software (last 5 in software) and 6 YOE in entrepreneurship and I work at a second-tier Indian outsourcing company. I understand I trigger a bunch of wrong signals when a recruiter sees my job application. So, I plan to invest my time in doing things that will improve my chances of getting an interview call. Specifically, I plan to - 1. Prepare for coding contests like GCJ hoping to get a good rating. 2. Create an open-source project that gets a decent amount of traction. 3. Contribute to popular open-source projects hoping to get noticed. Now, I doubt if my plan is right and I feel lost. It will help me if you can provide feedback on my planned course of action. Also, those who made it to big-tech after 35, please tell me how you got there so that I can follow in your footsteps. TC: rotten đ„ #Google #Amazon #Facebook #Uber #Microsoft #PayPal #Walmart #Apple
Are you trying to make a move from consultancy to swe? What is your current role in your company? GCJ and open source will help definitely, but it takes good amount time to get there and not all swe people in the industry have open source contributions or have participated in GCJ. It might rather demotivate you. I would recommend to solve as many as problems in Leetcode (get a premium subscription) until you get comfortable with easy and medium difficulty problems. If you do not have swe experience, work on end to end projects of your choice using tools and technologies (AWS, Kafka, GCP, NoSQL, etc) that will help give your resume an uplift and highlight it in your resume based on the role you are targeting. You can also share your resume in blind masking confidential details, and the community will give you good feedback (Start with this, imo). Lastly apply to tier 2/3+ product companies where there are not many applicants and try to get experience working on their projects before applying to tier 1/2 companies, say after a period of 2 years. Take referrals wherever you apply.
Thanks a lot for your detailed reply! I've added my resume as a new comment just to ensure it doesn't get lost among the replies. Please go through it if you have time. Regarding LeetCode, I've done about 60 (10E, 40M, 10H) and have started grokking it. Mainly because I went through CLRS, Skiena, Sedgewick and Tardos in parts first before LC. Also, I try variations of problems. (Eg: for the coin change problem, I try variations like without repetition/ the minimum number of coins/ using backtracking instead of DP etc.). I'm at a point where any random medium/hard looks familiar to me. I still have to improve on my speed which I believe will come with some intense practice for a couple of weeks before the interview. BTW, which companies would you consider as tier 2/3+ ?
I think you are on the right track. If you haven't done coding (data structures/algorithms) elsewhere, 60 is a less, but regardless you can start giving interviews on the side. Try to complete at least 200-300 problems in Leetcode. Regarding resume, as Apple has mentioned, tech stack is missing. What role are you targeting (SDE, TPM, PM) ? I feel, you need to rework on your resume. This could be the reason why you don't get interview calls. I would recommend to share the same resume in a new blind post asking for resume review to get more visibility. Regarding companies, you can have a look at below post and target companies that match your experience. There are a lot more out there, keep applying taking referrals. You should definitely get interview calls from category 3/4 companies mentioned in the post at the very least. [Blind] Check out this post! List High Paying and Good Perks/WLB companies in India (Tech Industry) https://us.teamblind.com/s/JBoS7zAK
There should be some openings at Autodesk that you may be interested in. DM if you want a referral.
EDIT: Thanks to everyone who provided feedback on my resume. I'm working on a new resume. Could you also provide feedback on my plan to get my foot in the door using GCJ, open source etc? I desperately need information on that. Adding my anonymized resume for feedback as advised by @ratatou . Please review.
With 8 YOE u gotta have more to talk about... talk about tech stacks and scaling problems, projects you delivered if not NDA etc
In tech, nobody cares about what you did or how many weeks it took you to rewrite a whole project. All big tech cares is about IMPACT. I recommend changing the wording for your resume. Talk about your IMPACT. Also, as a senior engineer, YOU NEED to talk about leadership and how you lead a project from start to finish, or how you can coach a junior engineer. 320k/4YOE/ 28YR
Your CV is bad. Drp "projects" and increase "experience" section, about what you did in those projects.
Everyone has different opinions but how at 10 years of experience does your work fit on a single page. Youâve delivered multiple projects I hope. Focus on impact and be specific. Words like complex are too direct and ambiguous. You can show that it was complex by explaining how discussing arch or project structure which shows arch skills and gives a tangible view into what types of problems youâve solved instead of âdesigned complex systemâ.
DM for PayPal if interested
DM for Facebook.
Thanks a lot to everyone who gave me actionable feedback on my resume! I rewrote my resume and I've managed to get my foot in the door! Special thanks to @souljaman for the FB referral. Got my FB (London) first-round scheduled in 3 weeks.
Even people with experience arenât getting calls back now the market is bad
I do have about 8 years of software experience and have been working in software for the past 5. Regarding the market, I guess there are hundreds of openings and thousands of applicants for each opening. A startup said they received 1500 applications for the one opening they posted. For big-tech I believe the ratio will be much worse. So, back to my original post. Will doing the things I planned help me stand out among the thousands of applicants?
Dude your resume is bad af sorry but just saying the truth.