This is a post sharing what I learned from my interview experiences.
I am Brazilian and for one year I was doing an internship at Roche in Germany. By the end of that one year, I was trying for a job in medium to big size (FAANG) tech companies. I ended up getting interviews for really big companies like Amazon (Various locations), Facebook (Dublin) and Bloomberg (London).
About the resume
The resume is not something that has a standard that is universally acceptable. For example, when applying for the US you should not put your nationality in it, from what I heard, that puts the company in some legal agreement with you if they decide to move on with the application. Well, anyways I never applied for the US I just wanted to make it clear that I am speaking about Europe and South America.
You don't need to have your resume in just one page, that is a myth. You can have a two pages resume, maximum, BUT the most important information about you (contact information, professional experience and principal education) must be on the first page. The second page can only have extra information, for example, extra courses, certificates, professional skills, languages that you speak, etc. Following this, I never had problems with my resume getting myself to the interview. So, in short, the information that will decide if you get an interview or not should be on the first page.
The reason for that is because the recruiter has hundreds, even thousands, of resumes to look and that he or she already looked at. If your resume is not pleasant to the eye, or it is hard to read or find the information in it (for example, if you set a really small font), they won't even look at it, they will just go to the next one. Your resume is your visit card, it has to look nice.
Amazon
My first experience with Amazon was a total screw up by my part, it was a position for SDE I in Madrid. I did the online assessment and passed, after that I heard from them only in the day of the technical interview, but I didn't know anything about it, so they said that sometimes it happens that the system doesn't send the confirmation of the interview. With that, they rescheduled me for another day, since I was not prepared they thought it would be better to postpone it. Why was that my screw up then? I had a lot of stuff going on during that time, and my mind just deleted the day of the interview from my memory. I did the online assessment, I passed, I scheduled the interview and even had favourited the email with the confirmation for the tech interview not to forget.
On the rescheduled date it was a problem with them, the interviewer and I had different meeting rooms on chime. I followed up with the recruiter saying that the interviewer didn't show up and then she noticed the problem. She said that they would reschedule again, but after that, they ghosted me and never replied ever again.
I got this book Cracking the Amazon Interview: A Step by Step Guide to Land the Job by Misha Yurchenko in a promotion where it was for free for Kindle. In the book, there is some really interesting information about the interview process at Amazon, but most importantly about the leadership principles. It explains how to answer questions about each one of them, what Amazon looks for in the answers, it's really useful. Another useful information is that when you apply for a job at Amazon, only that recruiter who selected you can follow with your applications for the next six months. So if you apply again the same person that already denied you once will receive your application. After that either you wait six months to get another person to deal with your applications or create an account with another email. That is also important if you want to apply for different continents.
The thing that I had failed the most during interviews with Amazon was with some really specific questions. I remember one of the interviewers asked me a question about graphs where I needed to know the formula to calculate the distance between two points, but it was not just the standard formula, I don't quite remember the details now.
This one was for Developer Support Engineer, not much to talk about it. The people there were great, the programming question (It was just one) was an LRU cache and in the feedback they said I went well on the interview, especially on the technical part. The problem there was that some of my behavioural questions answers didn't please the hiring manager. Guess what, he was Brazilian too. Although I failed I liked the whole process and their feedback was informative and encouraging.
Bloomberg
Bloomberg was for a Software Engineer New Grad position and had a two days onsite interview, on the first day it was the programming questions and on the second day the system design. The first day went well, one String question and the other one about trees, I don't remember the questions but I solved both without any problems. Soon after I left the office they sent me an email inviting me for the second day.
The second day also went well, my interviewer for the system design started with one simple programming question. The question was the same String one I got on the day before, so I told him that they asked me the same question and then I would solve in the same manner. After that we proceeded for the system design question (just keep this bold part in mind for now), it was an LFU cache question. After some brainstorming and some thinking, I was able to solve the problem. After the system design, I had an interview with HR, it went well and by the end the interviewer told me they would schedule one last interview, but that one would be by phone one week later.
After one week they called me and said they would not be proceeding with my application, the reason? Since in the system design question I said I had seen the problem before they expected me to have solved it much faster... I saw some discussion in leetcode forum about telling the interviewer if you have seen the problem before or not, in the case of Bloomberg don't go even near as close of saying that you have seen any bit of part of the f****** question before. Just for a misunderstanding, I lost the opportunity.
I got the feedback on a Friday and being from a third world country and losing one opportunity like this to work for a big tech company in London for such a reason was a really big hit for me. I remember getting depressed over that weekend.
The results
One thing that I learned from my experience is that the interview will not have a binary result. Is not just either you do well and get the job or you don't do well and don't get the job. You can:
- Do well and get the job
- Do bad and not get the job
- Do well and almost get the job
So it's more like a 33.33 to 66.66 chance. Of course, there are a lot of other things to consider, but when you look just at this, the odds are already against your favour, so don't feel bad or worry about failing, you will fail and that's ok. Interviewing for these companies is like playing Dark Souls, or Megaman, you go, you die, learn what you did wrong and then you avoid doing that on the next time.
The journey so far
In the end, I did pass the interview for Amazon in Amsterdam, but they didn't have any more available positions there so the recruiter said she would try and find an offer in another location. Two months after that she said that she was not being able to find anything for me since I applied at the end of the hiring season and she wouldn't know when she would be able to get back to me with an offer aaaaand I should have this in mind for my future plannings.
At the end of my internship, I had to go back to Brazil since I couldn't land anything in Europe and now with the Coronavirus I don't think it will be even possible any time soon. Loockly I started applying not much later after back in Brazil, I was able to land a job at SAP here and I intend to start a master's next year, the city where SAP is located has one of the best universities in Brazil nearby that is recognized internationally.