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Hey, I'm the current director of engineering, so I'll toss in my 2 cents because I want to make sure this is really, really clear. I could not care less about what which company/non-profit/agency/whatever you worked for. I just care about what you have stepped up and done in that environment. We will gladly consider a BigCo person, as long as they can demonstrate how they managed to get awesome stuff done at BigCo (e.g. ported a legacy system to a modern stack) because that is relevant to what we do. We have also passed on folks from FancyStartup.com because they show signs that they would struggle in an environment this complex. Fundamentally, who we look for are people who can go into just about any situation and figure out a reasonable way to deal with it so that we can get services working for the people who need them. And we look for this in our designers, engineers, talent team, procurement specialists, and product and strat ops folks. See mbellotti's comment for great info on some engineering-specific tips. The Federal government is a giant bureaucracy. I would actually love to see more BigCo applicants with experience succeeding in tough environments because that's what we do here. We need a good balance of people who know how to deal with things the way they are and people who know how to build things the way they should be. The best candidates are folks who can do both. We make the best decisions we can based on resumes and interviews, and it sucks when we may miss out on a super swell person. But it's bound to happen sometimes. To be clear: I don't care how old you are, what company you worked for, what part of the country you're from, what school you went to (or if you didn't go to school at all), or any other artificial criteria. In fact, I'm really not interested in hiring the same profile over and over again. That's ineffective and honestly, boring. All I care about is finding people who demonstrate that they can creatively and scrappily solve the types of problems we tend to see in the types of environments/situations in which we tend to land. Period. So if any of this sounds like you, consider applying. This country and it's citizens could really use your help. And make sure your resume shows us that this sounds like you. :) |