What does the big tech corporations value the most?

N2IT

From the way I have seen the HR modules on the bigs websites it immediate classifies you as a new graduate or a experience professional. The college graduate path seems fairly clear cut. School, Degree, Internship, GPA, achievements, etc would be huge factors in getting hired. Of course who you know always plays a factor . But from a professional view point, what would be the biggest factors to help you get into a Google, MS, Facebook, etc. That to me at least isn't as clear cut. I believe some of the same elements for a new graduate would come into play, school, degree etc. However what other elements factor in? Experience has got to be of course but other than that? Achievements? Project Deliverables? Cost saving solutions? Just curious what you all think get's you into those corporations? I honestly don't know, I have worked as a FTE for two fortune 100 companies but they were biotech and manufacturing. Not technology. Thanks!

shodown

I interviewed at Google 2 times when I was getting out the military. It all came down to NETWORKING. I knew somebody who worked for them and he passed my resume on. During the interview we talked about what I did, but it was more about me. I did do a round of the silly questions "how to inform people the beer fridge is empty".

As far as what they are looking for it all depends on the position. I was interviewing for a data center engineer as it fit pretty close to my experience in the military at the time. They wanted to know about how I handle emergencies, how I interacted with people. Google ended up loosing out to regional telcom who's job sounded better at the time and I only have 5 days to get back to them, while the google process was on going.

Let me know if you have any specific questions I will do my best to answer them.

networker050184

Quality experience is the biggest factor. Five years of progressively building experience is a lot different than the same one year five times. Are you being promoted? Does your company value you you enough to bring you into bigger projects with more responsibility? Or are you sitting in the same admin duty for years on end with no career growth?

Other things come into play of course like academics, industry participation (presenting at NANOG for us networkers for example) but these are secondary to the quality experience.

And obviously as showdown pointed out knowing someone on the inside to talk you up is never a bad thing!

FloOz

Companies like Google/Facebook get flooded with tons and tons of resumes each and everyday and I am sure a lot of them come from qualified individuals. The way to get to the front of the resume line is to be referred for a position by someone on the inside. I know this from first hand experience since the employer I work with now gets flooded daily with resumes. We always look at the referrals first.

shodown

I also wanna add that working for biotech/manufacturing type companies may exclude you from certain companies if they happen to be "monsanto". In DC people have been passed over because of things like that.

N2IT

Good to know.

shodown

I think that's only in certain places like DC or cali and now that I'm thinking about it, these were all non tech positions more policy based positions.