[EnderMB]

Out of interest, how did you go about actually getting the interviews?

Unlike you, I have a CS degree, and I've applied to the top five a few times now. Microsoft and Amazon contacted me, and after I agreed to an interview they both went quiet. Facebook never got back, and Google rejected me twice after sending in my CV.

I've tried a number of ways, through LinkedIn, direct applications, and even asking face-to-face at conferences, but it feels like I've angered some almighty tech god because none of them seem remotely interested, or are happy to tease me with an interview, only to ignore me after I reply.

I've always assumed that if it's this hard for me, then it must be as hard, or harder for others, so it'd be interesting to hear about the actual process of getting an interview from your perspective.

[skylark]

I'm honestly not sure what to tell you - the recruiting side of things is so opaque that I'm not sure what you can do to get past the initial screen. I personally had a strong referral at Google, but everywhere else I applied through the front door and had no issues.

If I were to take a guess, I'd say that I got a bit lucky - right place/right time sort of thing. I had a few years of experience under my belt, which separated me from the new grads, but not so many years of experience that I'd be competing with senior engineers. On top of that, I applied for front end positions, which I think tech giants have only recently started to value - this has left a bit of a void that needs to be filled, which possibly made it easier for me to get the initial recruiter calls.

My resume was also relatively strong for someone with two years of experience. Solid university, strong GPA, and at my previous jobs I always tried my best to wiggle myself into taking on large projects and write tooling to make everyone's lives easier. This gave me a lot of stuff to talk about during the interviews and made for some impressive looking bullet points.