[justsocrateasin]

As an engineer who has worked as the hiring manager and directly looked through hundreds of resumes, I can say that with FAANG your resume probably would get pulled out of the stack. But maybe not. I found that, for better or worse, the only resume's that definitely got a look (and if they were above the bar, an interview) were ones that had a personal referral attached to them. It pulls it out of the stack. Frankly, I don't really apply for jobs without having a referral, I think it's often a waste of time. There's no guarantee your resume will make it out of a sea of others that look just like it otherwise.

Second, as other people have mentioned, sometimes FAANG can scare companies away. They see your resume and think "gosh, he's expensive, there's no way he'll sign at the rates we're offering". This happened to my father - MBA, 30 years of experience, he found that companies didn't want to hire him because he would "be too expensive" or "was more experienced" than they wanted.

Combination of those two factors could be it.

[whynotmaybe]

If everything goes well, I should be hiring my first employee in a few months.

FAANG in the resume will clearly be seen as a risk because we won't be working on high visibility project, we won't have free perks laying around the office and we won't be able to pay what they're used to have... So we're kinda sure that the person might leave at any better opportunity that comes around.

I won't be able to hire someone "perfect" so I'll hire someone "good enough".

To say it differently, I need a car, I know I should buy a brand new electric car but my budget only allows me to buy a used gas car.

[alkonaut]

Out of curiosity, how exactly did the referrals work? When you say "attached" do you mean literally attached? Or just that someone internal had emailed and said "heads up, this guy Bob Bobson, a former colleague of mine, is going to apply for the position and I think you should pay extra attention to his resume because he's da bomb"?

[nixgeek]

Many companies have ways for employees to refer new people into the recruiting process. It’s usually as easy as entering a name and email. Then when you apply Recruiting will see it comes with a referral from one or more existing employees.

Some companies will also give employees who refer someone that then is hired a bonus - have seen this be $1500 to perhaps $5000 in U.S. places.

Referral processes may ask whether you know the person in some non-professional capacity, or whether you have direct professional working experience with the person. There’s usually more weight assigned to the latter case.

Applicants who have multiple referrals really stand out; applicants who have referrals from people in my team (versus the wider >100k person company) are also extra interesting.

[bluGill]

That very much depends. Different companies work very differently. The important part is the hiring manager believes the person who referred you thinks you are good.

The best way to use your network in all cases above though is reach out to everyone. You never know who in your network has the right connections to help - but they do know. I know of cases where all the hiring managers (4 different managers) ask one person who to hire, if you already had reached out to that one person he will give them a resume and you are hired (note that no jobs were ever advertised, it was either this one person said who to hire or it went to an external 6 months contract to hire company). In small companies everyone talks to everyone, so just reach out to them. In very large companies you need to know someone who knows the hiring manager.

In all cases your contact will know better than you what to do. So ask them.