I recently landed an amazing job with Amazon making a lot more than what I make at IBM. And, I mean a LOT!!! I was shocked when I saw the offer. Now, the reality is that it took me more than a year and it was not easy, but it could have been sooner if I had prepared better. As a last visit to this site, I wanted to share some tips for those looking for a job.
Before I get to Amazon, let me say that I joined IBM right out of college and was there for almost two decades. I was always a great employee and survived many layoffs by transferring from one team to another, but it limited my career too much. In the last few years, things have got worse than ever. No place is safe! They had too many layoffs in the US and only back-filled the positions in India. I saw too many good people suffer. The culture got toxic.
In 2020, I decided to leave. I applied to a few jobs at Microsoft and got interviewed for one of them. When I had the panel interview, the main exec stopped the role play presentation, and simply asked me why would I want to apply for this job given my experience? He thought I should be applying for a manager’s role. They rejected me because of this. To me a lower level job there would have been better than the IBM chaos. The recruiter was very nice and very transparent. He tried to find me a manager’s job, but nothing came up.
I applied at Google, and they wasted my time for 6 months. Went through all the rounds of screening and virtual on site. Got good feedback from the interviewers, except for the hiring manager. He was very cold during the interview. The recruiter called me and told me I did great in the interviews, but that the hiring manager wanted to give a chance to an internal candidate to interview and asked me if I could wait for a couple of weeks. Of course, they gave it to the internal candidate. Then, they wasted my time with countless calls for months about possible jobs. Most of them required me to move, so it was a no go.
As for Amazon, here are my tips:
1) Prepare for rejection: I applied to 15 jobs at Amazon. 12 of those applications were ignored. I got rejected for 2 and got 1. Out of the two rejections, one was simply not a match, so it was just one phone call. The other was a match, but I got rejected during the first interview (see reason on #2). Note that most of the jobs had hundreds of candidates who had applied to the same job according to LinkedIn. The best way to get an interview is to get a referral from an employee.
2) Prepare for the interview: Google the Amazon Leadership principles and you will find countless videos and documents on how to prepare for the interview. I was so focused on getting an interview that I failed to prepare properly with the STAR method and got rejected during the first interview. One issue with being at IBM for so long is that you do not practice interviewing. Therefore, even if you are the best programmer or best businesswoman, you may not get the job.
Take a couple of weeks to write, in detail, a minimum of 2 projects (5 for customer obsession) for each leadership principle before you apply for the job. You must use the STAR method. The guy who interviewed me sounded new to doing interviews and had a hard time summarizing what I was saying into their system. That taught me to have crisp summaries of my projects to spoon-feed the interviewer what goes into their system. I even used the terms to make it simpler for them as in this was the Situation, and the Task, then I took these Actions, and these were the Results. The results are especially important as they want to hear numbers.
If you don’t prepare for the interview this way, you might fail. I’ve read countless of threats online of people who got rejected for the same reasons.
3) Take vacation: The interview process at Amazon and Google were hard. If you are serious about getting a job there, take vacation to prepare for the interviews. Practice with friends and family. If you prepare with the leadership principles, then you can interview in any company.
4) Keep up with your skills: I’ve always kept up with my technical skills, making sure I have certifications on marketable skills. Unfortunately, that has been very difficult to do at IBM in the last few years because you have to work nights and weekends just to save your job. At times, I was so consumed by work that I never had time to learn something new for months. Do NOT let that happen! Block time in your calendar. Push back on your manager when they give you too much work and do whatever you need to do to stay current. Do not wait until you have an interview to learn AI or whatever is important to the job you want. There are many sites out there, such as aCloudGuru and Coursera, that you can use to learn new skills.
5) Prepare for the interview beyond skills: I watched all the videos in YouTube by a lady called the Amazon Interview Whizz. I found those very insightful because she used to work at Amazon as a bar raiser, and she explains what each interviewer is looking for.
Amazon made me write an essay, made me write code, tested my business skills. There was depth and breadth to the interviews. Watching videos like these will help you prepare.
6) Good luck! Stop wasting time thinking about how to stay save during the next layoff. Stop listening to those bitter ex-employees who come to this site to tell you that IBMers have no talent. Put the time in finding a good job. I did not expect it would take me a year, but in my case, I was only looking at these top companies and ignored all the smaller ones reaching out to me through LinkedIn. For you, it might be faster. I thank IBM for the many opportunities and good memories of years ago, but it has been way too long since I had a good memory of working there.