Google Recruiter Tips On Resumes, Standing Out and Getting A Job with No Experience

thanks udacity for sponsoring this video hey everyone welcome back to my channel and today we have a super special video this is gonna be part one of a two-part series where we sit down with eddie a google recruiter and get all the tea on the interview process eddie will be answering questions like how do you actually get noticed by recruiters write a flag she sees on resumes and linkedin as well as other questions that you provided on youtube and on instagram and by the way thank you so much for sending those questions and as always if you want to see more content like this make sure to tap that like button smash that subscribe button and i hope you enjoy the video thank you so much for having me i'm excited my name is eddie or ariana people like to call me eddie so i prefer that i am a recruiter and currently have been recruiting for almost seven years now but it's my first time recruiting in tech currently at google and i recruit for senior software engineers at the moment that's awesome so yeah we got questions from youtube instagram like everyone has so much questions about how it works on the recruiting end for this specific part of the video we're going to talk first about the pre-interview process like all the information that you need just to like get access to these like amazing jobs in tech so we'll start with the first question which is how and where are recruiters sourcing their candidates that's a great question and this is something that i absolutely get all the time in my socials as well so there's many different areas that we recruit from i do first want to make the distinction between recruiters and sources so i know that sometimes people think of recruiters and that's the only people that you want to talk to or reach out to when it comes to jobs so there's also another role within recruiting that's called sourcing and these people are only in charge of finding good candidates that are passive meaning that having applied online i am a full cycle recruiter which means that i also do sourcing within my job why did i make that distinction so that people have more options to reach out to people on linkedin or other platforms to be able to chat with because recruiters tend to be really busy and it's really hard to get a hold of us sometimes so if you have another option sorcerer would be a great place the places that i go to first of all is our internal platform which is called g hire it's where we host a lot of our applications it's where we host a lot of candidates and every single person if you've applied in the universe of google for the past 15 years we're gonna have you on that database so that is a place where we do a lot of filtering we do a lot of skill searching something i'm going to get into detail in a little bit but that's number one that's the first place that we look for the second place we go into is linkedin which i know some people have a lovely relationship with linkedin but that is the place to be if you want to be found by recruiters because 98 of recruiters are utilizing linkedin to fight design candidates another place specifically for software engineers is github which i'm sure you're very familiar with and it's a place where we source a lot of our candidates as well who are currently not looking for jobs that means passive candidates we go in there we see if we find anybody that's interesting and then we then reach out via email or however it is that we can find their information another way that we can find people is through google a quick google search and we utilize what's called x-ray searches which are specific keywords we put into the search bar with certain annotations which are called like boolean searches like quotation marks and probably you you know as a coder how those things work so that's usually what we do in the google search and so if you want to find people from twitter or github or linkedin specifically with a specific keyword that's where we where we go and find our people so in the job postings we've seen like a lot of job postings even for entry-level people you have to have three to five years like we see a lot of these like expectations in the job postings that seem to be more than what the title of the role is so a question i got asked was in a job posting do you have to have the exact years of experience and the skills listed out to apply it's a great question and it is something that has been going around in the industry for so long how entry level is an entry level when you're asking for 35 years of experience so sometimes entry level doesn't necessarily mean that you're a recent grad entry level means that you're a little bit junior when it comes to the experience that we're looking for and my answer to that is as a person myself who has been a job seeker and a recruiter you don't have to necessarily have a hundred percent of the job requirements to feel empowered to apply we're also looking for people who potentially could cancel out the skills but have the personal aspect of how to do the job right because we're looking at different dimensions when we're trying to hire people we're trying to see how well they're going to be a match to the team that we're looking for not just necessarily the technical skills but who you are as a person right how fun you are to walk around how creative you can be and how many solutions you can bring to the team aside from the skills that you have on paper yes of course initially when we are looking for people we technically will be searching for skill set hard skills that you can actually do the job but we are also when we're jumping on the phone with you we want to make sure that you also kind of qualify with those personality traits that we're looking for characteristics my rule of thumb and i know that we're in tech so we love to talk about numbers my rule of thumb is if you have at least 65 to 75 of the job you should apply don't wait and sit and say if i don't meet 100 of the qualifications i'm not gonna apply which is very common in women which really is something that i am so passionate about educating women of color specifically in tech because we tend to not apply for jobs if we don't meet a hundred percent of the qualifications if you are meeting a hundred percent of the qualifications you might be overqualified for that job because it means that you don't have any room for growth you don't have any room to learn something new within the role so if you meet 65 to 75 percent of that job description please apply absolutely that's great to hear i think a lot of us get discouraged when we see like the job posting and it's like so many years of experience but it's nice to know that 60 to 75 of those requirements are what you actually need and you should just go ahead and apply anyway before we move on to the next questions i do want to thank the sponsor of this video thanks udacity for sponsoring this video accenture and udacity have teamed up to award 600 fully funded tech scholarships to train and empower individuals without a four-year degree with the most sought-after technology skills this scholarship is an amazing opportunity to access udacity's platform to learn new tech skills from learning the fundamentals of programming or predictive analysis at no cost these courses are three to six months long self-paced online learning programs that build real technical skills in about 10 hours a week if you are interested in participating please visit the link down below to complete a short 5 minute application applications end on january 17th so please visit the link in the description box down below when you're ready to actually start applying is it even worth it to go through an online application i feel like online applications like have so much stigma i know i've turned in like hundreds of them and gotten responses for maybe like 10. so do you think it's worth it to still turn in an online application for google specifically you have to unfortunately because of compliance reasons we won't be able to hire you if you're not in the system so you have to put in an online application now in order for you to surpass that black hole of the internet when you apply and either never hear back or get an instant rejection email saying you don't qualify what i love to see in applicants is apply try to be an early applicant and the way to do this is by turning on notifications for your job so if you're really interested in applying for a place like google amazon apple the big companies go down to their company page most of them are going to have the feature of you being able to turn or toggle like a little button that can give you alerts or you can go on linkedin which is my favorite platform to find jobs you can then create a specific search for you the the jobs that you're interested in and create an alert every time that a job is posted within that platform it will notify you that is how you can ensure that you can be one of the early applicants the reason why i like to see early applicants is because you have better chances of being seen that's number one number two is establish connections i know how cliche this might sound and people might say well i don't know how to do that you have linkedin you have social media i have so many people reach out to me via instagram be a tick-tock telling me hey i applied for this job just make sure that you are doing your homework don't just reach out and say hey can you find a fit for me because in reality that's not the recruiter's job to do you can say i applied for this job let us know which job specifically whether you can provide us with the link or the exact title that you apply for here's my resume for future references and just really short and concise two to three bullet points as of why you believe you're the best match for that role i'm more willing to reply to people like that who have put in the effort to tell me who they are and why they could apply for the role then somebody who just reaches out to me and say hey here's my resume can you find me a job so that really is gonna help you really establish those relationships because even if you don't get that job that you apply for we are gonna take you into consideration put you in the system which you already are by applying and we're going to consider you for future opportunities and that is how people are going to start making those connections and potentially finding something good because i took me a year and a half to land a job at google i have a really long journey of how i started and i didn't have any background in tech whatsoever so these tips really work because it has worked for me it's worked for five clients the past two months that i've had that wanted to get into tech and these are the exact same steps and steps that they have taken just make sure that you're doing those things and have patience as well as understanding that there's many jobs especially now in q1 and q2 that are going to open up so just kind of keep your eyes peeled for that you kind of have touched on this a little bit but let's say you can't get a referral other than like the online application which i guess you have to do if you're applying to google specifically what's another way to make sure that your application is seen yes we'll answer your question of like how can we really ensure that somebody gets seen being an early applicant for me it's really one of the best ways that you can ensure somebody's going to see your resume another way to do this is to be very targeted in the searches that you are looking for because when i first graduated college i was sending hundreds of applications but now that i've been in the industry for seven years i understand usually how this works and the more strategic and targeted you are the better chances because it means that you're spending more time intentional time writing out your applications less room for mistakes because i've received resumes that are named other company names like tick tock recruiter and things like that and those are not good for you because those are pointers that we take on and so this person i might be very good at attention to detail and that might be a soft skill that we're looking for so don't shoot yourself in the foot by just praying and praying just try to be strategic and understand the reason why you want to work for that company because yes we have millions of people who want to work for google every year but why why do you want to work at google set aside all of the bonuses and perks and benefits have connection to the company's mission and that is just gonna show through your application that is gonna show through your messages again if you choose five companies as opposed to a hundred you have better chances establishing meaningful relationships with people who work there at google we have what's called the championship program which means that we can set you up to talk to a person who works at google to chat about the company to answer all of your questions about interviews to answer all of your questions about what it's like to work at google so that can really give you an inside opportunity like an informational interview with somebody from the inside and you don't have to be in the track to interview you don't have to be in track to get a job there you just reach out to somebody and they will put you in contact with somebody that works at the company and that is a great opportunity for you to establish your relationships because again putting a face to the name in that resume is going to be a lot better than a cold email that you send to somebody who doesn't know who you are so those are the best tips i can give you that have really worked i mean this is what i do for a living so they really do work when you take the time and you're intentional about where you're applying and why you are applying to that place so kind of switching off to like standing out to recruiters so i know a lot of people like we message recruiters on linkedin what's the best way to really stand out i know you kind of mentioned some tips in the beginning but if you want to kind of like expand on those tips yes absolutely so i'll start with the pet peeves right the things that really are not gonna get you anywhere because those are the most common ones when you send such generic messages they're gonna get drowned because they're not gonna caught my eye and so far i'm just gonna move through whatever else working on that day right because i also have to disseminate through active applicants whom i'm talking to through linkedin so the way to stand out is make sure you connect with me through linkedin i post content on linkedin you can put a comment on one of my posts now that i'm seeing your name popping up every time i'm more willing to see your message once you go into the dm because i recognize your name remember it's about being familiar with somebody don't send a message and say hey i applied for this job can you help me out what does that mean i really just don't know what it is you're looking for i most likely won't be able to know because again we are we're such a big company that we're bucketed into different business units and we support different hiring managers and departments so i recruit for senior software engineers so if you're a recent grad and you come to me and say i'm looking for a software engineer position can you help me most likely i won't be able to help you and because the company is so massive i don't even know the recruiters that are currently working on those jobs so it would be best for you if you can give me more detail and say hey i applied for this job did you mind letting me know who i can contact or give me direction right like help me help you but don't just send that message for me to figure it out for you because i just one don't have the time and two like if you don't put any effort into it i'm like well you need to help me help you that's first what i see in people who are successful on getting through when it comes to a message are people who are not expecting anything from that message they're not with that entitled mentality of like you have to answer to me i just got one today beautiful this young woman who sent that message to me she is a recent grad which i was very impressed with her message she said something along the lines of i came across your content i have been commenting for a little bit not expecting you to answer i just wanted to put my name out there and ask if you have any tips on how to get started into the tech industry here's my resume in case you're able to help me but no pressure i reply to her let her know thank you for your message super quickly because she was very straight to the point concise and told me what she wanted as opposed to just have this guessing game i reply to her and let her know where she could go although i couldn't help her i said hey go to this link and here you'll be able to find resources and then you go and find those resources if you have done your due diligence and have done your research and then tell me that you have done that then i'm more willing to help you those are the messages that i usually see and also in the subject line you can even say such and such referred me or saw your content on such and such platform i'm just more willing because it means that you are intertwined with our ecosystem you know what i'm working on you know what i'm capable of helping you with and that really just helps for sure that's a really good tip so making sure to just like connect with the recruiter kind of outside of just that first linkedin message maybe like liking their posts or like responding to comments and then when you're actually reaching out to them being very specific about like the specific role like by adding the link and just creating that human connection seems like those are right exactly awesome absolutely let's move on to the resume section so i kind of got a lot of questions on youtube and instagram about what are the top five most important things you'd like to see on the resume people were wondering does like the format of the resume matter does the education section matter is it the keywords like when you're skimming through a resume what is it that you like to see yeah that's a great question so first i wanted to give everybody a resource that's public for everybody to access and this is careers.google.com how we hire again it's careers.google.com how we hire and there you'll see the whole process of how we interview and my favorite piece there is how to create a resume it's totally free google just being super transparent about what it is they're looking for and i'll let you in a little secret that is exactly how i formatted my resume the time that i got hired because again it took me a year and a half to get into google for rejections and the time that i got talked to is because i was like i have to be doing something wrong and then i found that website i was like well here's the answer for me my preference because i'm a non-technical so it will be different for you if you're checked but the way that it works is i prefer to have one page the simpler the better however i am recruiting for senior engineers so i'm talking to people who have 20 plus years of experience so i do get if you have two pages that's totally fine what i'm looking for is the technical skills so hard skills the type of coding language that you're using so if i'm looking for somebody who writes in javascript i want to be able to see javascript on your resume so if you're seeing a post online and you see something along the lines of c plus plus or python or javascript or java just make sure that if you do have those expertise that's the first thing i'm going to say on your resume because i said okay fine everything else we can figure it out but if you don't have the technical skills i can move forward because the manager is just not gonna go for it right that's the number one thing is the skills when it comes to the education that's a twofold because i personally don't care much about education if it's not required by the job we have twofold we have education or experience not both could be one or the other so let's say that you have seven years of experience coding and you just have coding bootcamp certificate i mean it doesn't matter if you have a computer science degree or not because you've been doing this for seven years now and obviously you know what you're doing so the reason why we sometimes ask for the computer science degree is because the technical piece of the interview will ask you basics about things that you would have learned in school in the computer science program so that is the reason why we do that because we've seen that people who don't hold that computer science degree do very poorly on the technical interviews as opposed to people who do have a background with a computer science degree that's the only reason why we do that that's number three number four would be your projects what are things that you have worked on what are the scope how big of projects have you worked on and the type of teams that you have helped and if you've created an app which is why i'm such an advocate for people having their side hustles like their side projects because if you don't get that from your job you can at least have that on your site something that you do for fun create an app for yourself and just put it out to the public and that's something that can speak volume of your experience and the last piece is any certifications that are required by the job so if there's something that's required the must-haves in the job description i will have to see that in the resume otherwise i won't be able to move forward because it's not up to me but the hiring manager they will absolutely say no if it's on their must-have pocket and they don't have it in their resumes just make sure that you're really reading through the job description i was actually reading a research paper that says that people spend 59 seconds reading a job description before they apply that's just not nearly enough time for you to analyze if you actually qualify so what i recommend which is why i was saying earlier to have a strategy behind what jobs you're applying to because when i applied for google i stripped my resume completely blank page and then i started writing my bullet points with my experience very much correlated to the job description itself so i would go bullet by bull and i said okay let me think about a project that i worked on that's very transferable to what they're asking for in this bullet point and so that's how i translated it and then the last piece i want to say about your resume is that it has to have metrics we do have a format that says that it's the xyz formula which is you've accomplished x as measured by y resulted in z just make sure you go by that formula and every single bullet point read it and say okay is this in this format because if i don't have a result or a metric some sort of data in the bullet point get rid of it because sometimes we just go into so much detail about what it is we do day-to-day on our jobs that we miss the big picture in reality i just want to see what's the impact you've had in your team and how you can potentially translate that impact and influence into our team at google do these seem like things that you've talked about wanting to see on a resume do they translate to linkedin or do you like have to format your linkedin in a totally different way yes it's a great question absolutely it does and this is another thing that i want people to really understand linkedin is your best friend because when i'm doing a search on linkedin i'm looking for keywords right so it's a little different than your resume because your resume i'm actually reading a document with linkedin i have the help from the actual system where i will go into what's called linkedin recruiter i put search words like in a boolean search let's say that i'm looking for a software engineer who's specializing in machine learning right i would put something like machine learning learning structures algorithms things like that so if i put those keywords those keywords are gonna pop up from people who already have those included in their linkedin profile and usually these things pop in your headline which is your title right below your name on linkedin and your about section and then your experience like if you want to give me a summary while you're doing your job day to day like if you have certain keywords in there that you can put related to your job that can help me because if i'm looking for that linkedin would spit out results according to what's in your linkedin profile and what i'm looking for it can be very similar to your resume however your linkedin profile it's like the trailer of a movie right you want to give me enough to entice me to ask you for your resume i don't want you to copy paste your resume because then there's no intrigue there you want to make sure you have the opportunity to chat with somebody on the phone because you have better chances at continuing in the process once you get that phone call but if you just have your resume there i might be making assumptions that you don't want me to make you want to make sure that you have somebody reaching out to you to get on a phone call because i want answers to the things that are not in your linkedin profile which would be on your resume so that's an inside knowledge there for anybody that's listening are there any like red flags or deal breakers or even frequent mistakes that you've seen on people's resumes or linkedin the biggest red flags that i think has translated from corporate tech is when you are a job hopper now let me just explain what that means because i'm a big advocate for job hopping when it's done the right way because obviously you have to get your money and we all know that you make more money by switching companies right what i mean by job hopping having to be a red flag is when you're on a job for three months when you literally have four jobs in a row for three months at a time i'm like hmm what's going on here is this person leaving their jobs are they getting fired what is happening because again it's assumptions we all have biases so we're already making assumptions and the reason why we make these assumptions is because past behavior is very indicative of what the future is going to be right so when we are hiring somebody we want to make sure that we're hiring somebody for the long term because it is expensive to hire people we hire somebody new it takes a lot of time and manpower from the recruiting team from the hiring team from the hiring managers team and then we have to onboard that person which takes anything between three to six months for somebody to really kind of get the ball rolling so if you translate all of that time into money we're talking about close to 25 000 per head every year when you're recruiting someone new that's a lot of money for a company right so when we're hiring somebody we just want to make sure that we are hiring someone that's going to be a great match for the long term now when job happening is done the right way i'm thinking anything between you know a year and a half to two years that's a healthy amount of time that you can stay within a company however i understand that things happen and you might have landed in a role or a company that didn't turn out to be what you expected please don't stay there just because you want to be there for a whole year your mental health is a lot more important so if you have to go just go like don't think about it's going to be a red flag if it's once or twice we can absolutely be okay with that but if this becomes a pattern like four five times in a row that is a pattern just make sure you watch out for that another red flag sometimes that i see is when people are only working contract and freelance jobs like back to back to back to back to back when you don't get out of a rat race of only doing freelancing that could potentially hurt you because we are assuming that you don't want to be a full-time employee that's what the assumption is another red flag is when your resume doesn't match your linkedin profile and i understand that certain positions and certain companies have different titles internally but just want to make sure that those match the best they can because we're going to assume that you're trying to be sneaky and lie on your resume to get through the system just make sure that you are having a comparison game there where you either have some sort of explanation as to why you have a different title on linkedin that you do on your resume and things like that any other red flags that we might assume can be cleared up with a background check afterwards so i'm not as concerned in that in this beginning stages now let's kind of talk about more junior candidates a lot of junior candidates have like insecurities about like how to stand out especially if they don't have previous tech experience or they come from an untraditional path so do you have any tips for junior candidates specifically about how to stand out when they don't have previous job experience yes that's a great question and it takes me back to my time when i was a junior as well graduating college i think connections here are gonna be the number one thing i'm gonna tell you something else right now is the access we have with educational resources online there's no excuse to have no experience i don't want people thinking of experience as in job experience because sometimes it's important yes to have that but sometimes you just don't have the opportunity so see if you can help somebody if you want to become a software engineer and you went to school for arts and you have nothing to do with computer and science there's a bunch of boot camps out there that can really prepare you really reputable ones that can prepare you to become a software engineer we have youtube university that can teach you how to code for free and i've seen people who are extremely talented and can do the job well with that just make sure that you start off your resume with those things that are relevant to the job even if you haven't technically done them you have put in the effort and you've been resourceful to learn how to do those things on your own and that is very admirable when it comes to your linkedin make sure don't be lazy with your linkedin get on there and start searching for people who have the jobs you want and see okay what does this person show on their linkedin how is their photo taken how is their headline imported what are they saying on their about page what type of titles have they held in the past what type of certifications have they taken and then start making friends with those people and then taking inspiration from what's in their linkedin profile to translate into yours because if they have that job you want chances are is that they were found through linkedin or have some sort of experience that can be taught to you by making that connection with them right just let them know hey i'm a recent grad i have no experience in computer science but i'm very interested in learning more about the tech industry here's the reason why i admire your background it's exactly where i potentially would see myself going do you have some time to chat with me 15 minutes here's the time for next week that i can chat with you do you have availability start making out those connections because even if that person is not a recruiter or somebody who's a decision maker they might know somebody who can help you get there and a lot of junior candidates who sometimes they use projects to show like their experience and a lot of them are kind of curious like from a recruiter's perspective do you care more about like the breadth of the project like that it's touching so many different technologies or do you care about like a candidate who is focused on one technology but really does like a deep dive into that technology so that has two answers to be honest we recruit for both we have what's called general software engineer which are more generalist people who touch all areas who are full stack per se they can do front end they can do back end and that's an opportunity that you have there now we also have very specific jobs like we're looking for embedded software engineers we're looking for front-end engineers we're looking for back-end engineers so you want to make sure that if that is the path you have to ask yourself as a person where do i want to go what type of engineer do i want to be and then that's where you kind of hone in if you want to be a generalist that's fine there's no shame in being a generalist it can actually give you a lot more opportunities and a lot more options because when you become very niche or specific just know that the opportunities are going to be a little bit narrow or you want to be a generalist something that i do want to say that when you become a specialist you become a lot more in demand because again it's a niche role there's not as many people knowing to do what it is you know how to do so just think about what it is that you want to fall and where are the opportunities sometimes you might have to decide to be a generalist to have a wide net of opportunities to jump into and then once you're doing that job is where you can tend to say hey i see that i've worked in different projects but i enjoy doing machine learning a little bit more so maybe i would need to hone into those projects and only try to volunteer for things that are related to that and then that's how you become a specialist but everything is a process when it comes to your career don't think about it as a linear thing think about it as different paths that you take in order for you to find that final way that you want to go into that's really good advice so now we're kind of moving on to a different section which is the interview section so a question that i got was why is the tech interview process so long because you have so many steps even when you actually make it on site it's a multiple step process so why is it long unfortunately you know it's something that i don't enjoy either as a recruiter i know that sometimes putting people through those long processes can be very discouraging and i went through it as well so and i know how nerve-wracking it can be and it doesn't help me because as a recruiter the way that my success is measured is by how many people i can hire sometimes we put people through these processes and they're so long that they just drop out in the middle of it like i'm not interested anymore this is taking too long and so it hurts us because first it's really hard to find good people to put to their process but the reason why this happens is because we want to make sure that we're providing an equitable environment for everybody in a level playing field so that we are attracting the right candidates and then making the selection for the people who deserve to be there right not just selecting people based on our biases but based on their skills and expertise and so the way that it works just to give you a little bit of a background is we have an initial phone screen with the recruiter myself and then if we see indicators of this person being able to do well or being a good match for the company in their in the job then we put them to what's called to a technical fun screen and that's where you're going to be coding of course if you're a software engineer and that's going to be 20 to 30 lines of code and then they put you through other four to five interviews after that and they could be a mixture of technical interviews within the team that you might be matched with and then other people from the company that have nothing to do with engineering but they just want to test out your cultural ad and cultural match to the company and so that takes time because we're having close to seven people involved in this process and that usually takes anything between four to six weeks which sounds like a lot if you think about it but it's just once you go through those processes then we have to wait for feedback like people have to write their feedback and we have to be very careful about the feedback because again we're trying to remove all biases so we don't know who you are like people who are taking interviews with you they're putting feedback in the system and they're trying their best not to identify who you are so that the person who's reviewing the feedback later on doesn't have the biases in their mind whether you're a male female you know whatever background you have so that's something else that takes time and intention when it comes to selecting the right candidate again this is very standard it's not just google it's very standard across all big companies when it comes to the tech industry so if you really want to get into tech just don't be discouraged going into the process knowing what i just said is gonna give you a head start because that way you know what to expect and you don't get desperate because sometimes when you like i just don't want to go through this process anymore it's too long just wait it out because it's gonna be worth it thank you so much for watching this video make sure to stick around next week to see part two where eddie will be answering questions on negotiation and on how much a cs degree really matters i'll catch you guys then [Music] you

Channel: Bukola

Views: 5,049

Keywords: software engineer nyc, how to be a software engineer no CS degree, google interview, google recruiter, google interview tips, google nyc

Id: 24qE3QJGVH4

Length: 31min 13sec (1873 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 19 2021