[gonehome]

I've found internal referral to be the only reliable way to get an interview at competitive companies. Generally I think the below is true when it comes to getting interviews.

- Internal Referral (this is the best way)

- Twitter leading to internal referral

- Inbound recruiter leading to interview (only happens if you've already succeeded at 1 or 2 previously).

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- Have gone to famous school like MIT or Stanford.

There are a lot of ways to get an internal referral, but most involve making friends with someone who already works at a place or knows someone who does. You can do this by making friends on twitter, HN, github projects etc. Moving to an area that has a lot of the industry (SF Bay) if possible helps too, though with remote work is less important now.

[fatnoah]

I think mileage may vary depending on location, role, and YOE. I didn't go to a top/famous school, but I do have 20+ years of experience, including Principal level IC and several years of management experience as tech lead manager, manager of managers, and executive (at a small startup, so not a huge org) experience.

Of the six rounds of interview/job offers I've gone through since 2016, 5 were the result of a recruiter finding me on. LinkedIn. Caveat for one of those was that one of those was a reachout from a big name tech company a couple years previous, so I then reached directly out that recruiter. For another big name tech company, I submitted my resume directly through their online portal and got a call the next day.

My LinkedIn spam level is probably about 75%, which isn't actually a terrible ratio. I consider spam to be something that's clearly irrelevant to my role or far too junior. For the spam, I ignore, and for the others I always reply with a polite "thanks, but no thanks" which people generally respect and has occasionally led to a more appropriate job link.

[gonehome]

Yeah I think you’re right, I suppose I was thinking in the context of early career or first job. I think you get more attention if you have a lot of YOE.

[fatnoah]

That makes sense. Having an "in" definitely helps at all stages, but I can see how it be even more essential when you're more junior.