How I Landed Interviews at Google, Facebook, and Bridgewater – And What I Learned

Getting interviews at top tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Bridgewater is a daunting task, especially if you don‘t fit the traditional pedigree. These companies are flooded with millions of qualified applicants from all over the world.

Google, for example, gets over 3 million applications per year but only hires about 7,000 people – an acceptance rate of just 0.2% [1]. Facebook receives over 250,000 applications annually and hires around 6,000, for an acceptance rate under 2.5% [2]. The vast majority of these hires come from top engineering schools like Stanford, MIT, and UC Berkeley.

So what do you do if you‘re not in that elite educational tier? How can you stand out and prove that you belong in the same league as the Google and Facebook engineers?

I faced that exact challenge as a student from a relatively unknown Canadian school with mediocre grades and no fancy internships. Yet through a lot of hard work and some unconventional strategies, I was able to land interviews at many of the most competitive tech companies out there.

In this post, I‘ll break down the tactics that worked for me and share the lessons I learned along the way. Whether you‘re a student trying to break into big tech or an experienced developer looking for a new challenge, I believe this advice can help you take your career to the next level.

The Resume Black Hole

Like most job seekers, I started by applying online and submitting my resume to every posting I could find that seemed remotely relevant. I carefully tailored each application, crafted what I thought were compelling cover letters, and made sure to hit all the right keywords.

After dozens of submissions, I had nothing to show for it but a pile of auto-rejection emails. I was sending my resume into a black hole never to be seen again by human eyes.

The unfortunate truth is that when companies receive thousands of nearly identical resumes, yours is unlikely to get more than a cursory 6-second glance [3]. The applicant tracking systems (ATS) that companies use to filter resumes aren‘t very good at assessing actual talent – they just look for certain keywords and pedigrees.

If you don‘t have the right buzzwords or a big brand name on your resume, chances are your application is getting automatically rejected before a real person even looks at it. Depressing right?

After banging my head against this wall for months, I realized I needed a radically different strategy. Relying on resumes and job postings simply wasn‘t going to cut it.

Show, Don‘t Tell

The fundamental flaw with resumes is that they‘re all tell and no show. You can claim to have all sorts of skills and impressive sounding achievements, but from the company‘s perspective, it‘s all just unverified fluff.

If you really want to prove your worth, you need to demonstrate your abilities with tangible evidence. You have to show them, not just tell them, what you can do.

For a full-stack developer, that means building real-world projects that showcase your technical skills. Things like:

• A web app with a polished UI and complex back-end
• A mobile app that solves a real user problem
• An open-source tool or API
• A data analysis or machine learning project
• A technical blog or tutorial

The form doesn‘t matter as much as the substance. The key is to create something substantial that highlights your abilities across the stack – front-end, back-end, dev ops, etc. Bonus points if it‘s something you can actually launch and get people using.

One great example is Fullstack.io, a suite of well-crafted tutorials and resources created by a full-stack developer in his spare time. He now has over 80,000 unique monthly visitors. Guess how many recruiters are banging down his door?

Making your code open-source on Github is great for visibility, but don‘t just stop there. You should write detailed blog posts or record screencasts explaining how you built your projects and the technical challenges you overcame. Put those front-and-center on your personal website.

This kind of content acts as your technical resume. Instead of a piece of paper that claims you know Angular or React, you can show recruiters complex apps you‘ve built using those tools. Instead of simply name-dropping data structures and algorithms, write about how you analyzed and optimized your code.

Make it impossible for someone to look at your work and not come away impressed!

Share Strategically

But creating amazing content isn‘t enough by itself. If you just publish it and hope that recruiters stumble across it organically, you‘ll be waiting a long time.

You have to be proactive about getting your work in front of the right eyeballs. Share links to your projects on LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, and relevant niche communities like Hacker News or specific subreddits. Engage in discussions and offer helpful advice to build your credibility.

Join local tech meetups and give talks showing off what you‘ve built. Go to hackathons and recruiting events. Get in front of real humans whenever you can.

But the killer strategy I discovered is directly emailing your projects to engineers and hiring managers at your target companies. This is how I was able to get my foot in the door for interviews.

Using LinkedIn and some Google dorking, I compiled a spreadsheet of hundreds of potential contacts – engineers, recruiters, directors, even some CTOs and VPs. I dug up their email addresses with tools like EmailHunter and Anymail Finder.

Then I started systematically emailing every single person, sharing my best work and politely asking for their advice and feedback. I made sure to keep the emails short and value-packed, focusing on how my projects could help their team and asking for a quick call or coffee chat.

Here‘s the actual template I used – feel free to steal it:

Subject: [Your Name] – [School] [Major] Student

Hi [Name],

My name is [Your Name] and I‘m a [year] studying [major] at [University]. I‘ve been teaching myself full-stack development and I recently built a web app that [one sentence pitch].

[Link to app]

Here‘s a detailed blog post I wrote about how I built it: [Your blog url]

And here‘s all the code on Github: [Github url]

I would be really grateful to get your expert feedback on my work. I know you must be super busy, but if you have a few minutes to take a look and share any thoughts on how I can improve, I would really appreciate it!

I‘ve also attached my resume in case it‘s helpful. Please let me know if you have any other questions!

Thanks,
[Your Name]

I carefully tracked my response rates in a spreadsheet. After sending 100 emails, I had a 10% response rate – 10 people actually replied! A few of them even agreed to do a quick phone call where they shared some great advice and offered to pass my resume along to their hiring teams.

Was it a ton of work? Absolutely. But it was far more effective than clicking "Easy Apply" over and over again in my PJs.

The real hack is realizing that behind every great company are real humans who are often happy to engage with young ambitious people, especially if you‘ve done something to earn their attention. But it‘s on you to make the first move.

Handling Rejection

Even with all the right moves, you‘re still going to face a lot of rejection in this process. I certainly did. I was so excited when I finally got an interview at Facebook, but after passing the initial phone screen and flying out to their headquarters for a full day of technical interviews, I was devastated to get the "thanks but no thanks" email a week later.

Same thing happened at Google. Made it through a few rounds of interviews but ultimately got the rejection. Even after studying for months and completing hundreds of LeetCode problems, I still made tons of silly mistakes in the live coding sessions.

Rejection is never fun. But over time, I learned to stop tying my self-worth to the whims of big tech companies. I started focusing more on the process, the skills I was building every day, and the portfolio of real-world projects I was creating. Even if a Google interviewer wasn‘t impressed, every trial by fire was an opportunity to learn and get better.

Looking back, I‘m actually grateful that I got rejected so many times. Being an underdog forced me to get creative and figure out how to stand out. It drove me to build some really cool projects that I never would‘ve made otherwise. And getting my hopes dashed again and again thickened my skin and motivated me to come back stronger each time.

Embrace the burn of rejection, because that‘s how you know you‘re pushing your boundaries. You can‘t lose if you just keep learning.

You Got This!

So here‘s my parting advice:

• Stop relying on resumes and cover letters – focus on building tangible evidence of your abilities
• Create projects that solve real problems and write about them
• Share your work strategically in online communities and directly with people who can help you
• Don‘t take rejection personally – have a growth mindset and focus on getting better every day

It doesn‘t matter where you went to school, how high your GPA is or how many big brand names you have on your resume. At the end of the day, the quality of your work and your ability to solve real problems is what will make you stand out to employers.

You‘re going to have to hustle harder than the competition. You‘ll face a lot of disappointment and people ignoring you. But if you stay focused on honing your craft, putting yourself out there and delivering real value, the right opportunities will come.

I managed to go from a complete nobody to getting a shot at some of the most selective companies in the world, all by creating cool stuff and sharing it with the right people. I wasn‘t always the most qualified candidate on paper, but I clawed my way into the arena.

If I can do it, I know you can too. You just have to put in the reps. Keep learning, keep building, and keep showing up. The power is yours!

By the way, if you have any questions about this process or need any feedback on your projects/resume, please reach out to me! I‘m always happy to help ambitious people however I can.

Thanks for reading and happy coding!

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-jobs-hiring-process-2016-4
[2] https://blog.simplify.jobs/facebook-careers-everything-know/
[3] http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-recruiters-look-at-during-the-6-seconds-they-spend-on-your-resume-2012-4

[Author Bio: John Doe is a full-stack developer and tech career coach. He‘s helped dozens of people land jobs at top tech companies and writes about web development at johndoe.io.]