Ex-Google engineer shares 5 tips for landing a Big Tech job, from referrals to technical interviews

• Maddy Zhang spent over four years at Google, after internships at Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft.
• On "A Life Engineered," she shared five tips for getting a job in Big Tech.
• "Because there's so much competition, it's honestly an employer's market," she said.

Big Tech can seem impenetrable. This Google alum has some tips for getting your foot in the door.

Maddy Zhang spent over four years working as a software engineer for Google, touching both the search and advertising businesses. She now works at Airbnb, per her LinkedIn, and previously held internships at Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft.

On the "A Life Engineered" podcast, Zhang shared five tips for landing a job at Google or one of its competitors.

First, she recommended applying to jobs early — as in, within hours of the openings being posted.

"Because there's so much competition, it's honestly an employer's market," Zhang said. "If you wait a day, probably there's going to be hundreds of applicants for it."

While the recruiter is supposed to look at all of the applications, they'll likely look at the first batch and ignore the rest, she said.

Applying quickly can help you land a job, LinkedIn data shows. Responding quickly helps too: US job seekers who reply to a prospective employer's message within 24 hours are 4.1 times as likely to get hired and 6.7 times as likely to get an interview, according to Indeed.

Next, she advised getting referred by a current employee. Zhang's friends who have applied with referrals had a higher success rate, she said. But that doesn't mean ask anyone on LinkedIn to support you.

"If you don't actually have a connection with them, it's not going to help," she said.

While a good résumé or referral might get you through the recruiter's initial pass, applicants must then pass a technical interview. Many engineers prepare using LeetCode — a tool Zhang said was still valuable.

"I know no one really likes it," she said. "It's a necessary evil."

Zhang recommended doing a mix of easy, medium, and hard LeetCode problems. When you get stuck, she advised not just looking at the answer, but retyping and running the solution.

It's easy to think that Google is filled to the brim with Stanford graduates. That wasn't Zhang's experience, though. Her next piece of advice: Don't underestimate yourself based on your school.

Most of Zhang's friends didn't go to "good computer science schools," she said. Many attended state schools or community colleges before transferring.

"As you progress forward in your career, your school matters less and less," she said.

Even with the best application, interview prep, and referrals, there's no guarantee of a job. That's Zhang's final piece of advice: remember it's a numbers game.

Zhang said that she had been rejected hundreds of times. When she was younger, those rejections made her want to give up on the industry. She's since learned that it's not personal.

"Maybe I had a bad day, maybe the interviewer had more qualified candidates, maybe there's something I couldn't control," Zhang said.

"Rejection is nothing on who you are as a software engineer."