Here's what it's REALLY like to interview at Facebook, Google, and 11 other big tech companies
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According to research from LinkedIn, everyone wants to work in tech these days — especially for big-name companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft.
In fact, these tech giants topped LinkedIn's 2015 ranking of the most in-demand employers in North America, taking four of the top five spots.
And it's no surprise why. They're known for offering attractive perks, great pay, and excellent workplace cultures.
But because jobs at these companies are so sought after, the competition for landing one is fierce — and the hiring process can be challenging and intimidating.
Reuben Yonatan, founder and CEO of GetVoIP, a digital telephone service, explains in a blog post on his site that he wanted to find out what it's really like to apply for a job with these tech giants. So, he looked at hundreds of reviews on Glassdoor from software engineers who applied to 13 popular tech companies and identified trends in the interview processes.
More specifically, his team looked at whether interviewees had a positive, negative, or neutral overall experience at each company — and how they rated each one in terms of level of difficulty.
Here are those results:
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"It turns out, an easy interview process did not always correlate to a positive interview experience, and a difficult interview process didn't always correlate to a negative experience," Yonatan says.
For example, Twitter's interview process was moderately difficult (3.1/5.0), but about 42% of interviewees had a negative experience. Conversely, Google had the hardest process (3.4/5.0), but 56% of people had a positive experience.
Yonatan's team also calculated the average length of time interviews took at each company — and those results seemed to have little influence in a candidate's experience.
"While Cisco, Yahoo, and Uber had the shortest interview process of two weeks, only interviewees at Cisco had an overwhelmingly positive interview experience," he says.
The chart below shows the interview process at 13 popular tech companies.
"Interview methods include phone screens with HR and recruiters, technical phone interviews, online tests and projects, Skype calls, and on-site interviews," Yonatan writes. "As we did not have sufficient data to measure the time between each step in the interview process, we spaced each step equally."
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"Although this data is specific to software engineers, we believe that it still exemplifies how the hiring process in many industries goes beyond just the traditional phone call and in-person interview," says Yonatan. "Today, there are multiple rounds of phone/Skype screenings and test projects before you even qualify for an onsite interview. The visualizations above give you an idea of just how intensive the hiring process can get, but don't let the process discourage you."
He says a little research and preparation still go a long way.
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