Read 5 CVs That Got Software Engineers $300,000 Jobs at Big Tech Companies

• Five techies share the biographies that helped them land coveted roles at Big Tech companies.
• Some emphasized adhering to resume standards, such as keeping newer achievements at the top.
• Others, however, suggest breaking the resume rules to appear more authentic and a team player.

For Ankit Virmani, changing his resume was one of the first steps to entering the technology industry after a consulting career.

He wanted to work on projects with technical depth and wanted to focus on building rather than selling.

On weekends and after his full-time job at Deloitte in 2020, Virmani spent three to four hours each evening practicing coding and another two hours reading about technology.

Thanks to the feedback from his mentors, he created a CV that helped him land a position at Google a few months later.

Business Insider spoke to Virmani and four others Employees from, among others, Google, Meta and Salesforce from the USA about how they prepared their CVs to best present their skills and personality.

The group, consisting of three engineers, a product manager, and a machine learning architect, approached their CVs in different ways. One broke the traditional single page rule, and another added a QR code to help track applications – but they all got jobs in Big Tech.

Machine learning architect at Google

Virmani said his resume is different from most people in the tech industry. First, it moved away from the one-page rule that many career experts and professionals follow because it wanted a clear and neat presentation.

He said he also avoids overemphasizing individual contributions on his CV and instead writes about what his team has accomplished.

“In my experience, Google really, really values ​​honesty and humility. That’s the culture of the company – we know that an individual doesn’t achieve anything great,” he said.

Software engineer at Google

Sahil Gaba, a software engineer at Google, said he liked two main things about his 2021 resume that earned him a $300,000 starting salary.

Related stories

He recommended deemphasizing older achievements such as education, setting them aside and presenting more relevant sections such as work experience and skills in more prominent places.

“I worked quite hard for all these grades, but I know that in the context of the job I’m looking for, these grades are not that important,” Gaba said.

He also included a section titled “Interests” where he listed a few interests because they are good icebreakers in interviews.

“If you find something that overlaps, that starts a discussion that leads to a warm start,” he said.

Software Engineer at Meta

Hemant Pandey, a software engineer at Meta, said he has been using the same CV template since he completed his master’s in 2017.

The format helped him land previous positions at Tesla, SAP, Salesforce and his current role at Meta, where he was offered a starting salary of approximately $520,000.

One thing he consistently puts on his resume is his college grade point average. Even though it’s unimpressive, he thinks it’s a great story for an interview.

“I usually talk about how I bombed my first semester and was intimidated,” he said of getting a low grade point average and almost losing the internship he was offered.

He talks about how he had to try hard to keep up with more experienced students, thanks to which he achieved better results in subsequent semesters.

“It’s a good story of growth and learning from mistakes.”

Product manager at Google

Yung-Yu Lin has been working in the technology industry for 18 years and has changed career paths three times. He started in hardware engineering, moved to software and became a product manager – his dream role.

During his career in the US, he updated one CV he had created as an MBA student. This landed Lin roles at Meta, Visa and PayPal and, in 2022, a $350,000 compensation package at Google.

His top tip is to sort through companies and customize your resume to save time. When he applied for jobs as part of his MBA program, he developed a system for categorizing each opportunity into one of three levels and varied his resume in various ways.

“Tier one is about 20 to 30 different positions that I really, really want,” Lin said. For these companies, he adapted not only the “additional information” section, but also bullet points in the area of ​​professional experience.

“Level two is about 30 to 50 positions. They are highly correlated with first-level positions, but maybe the company or industry is not my highest level, but I will take it anyway if I am lucky enough to get an offer,” he said. “I don’t have a lot of time to really customize every second-level app – so I only customize ‘additional information.’

Tier three covers the remaining 200-300 positions that Lin considered possible but placeholder.

“I basically only use one CV to apply to all third-level positions,” he said.

Software engineer at Salesforce

Anup Ghatage landed his first job after completing his master’s degree by handing out personalized CVs with a QR code and tracking companies that viewed his CV.

Previously at Cisco and SAP, software engineer currently works at Salesforce where he interviews other candidates.

He tries not to personalize his résumé too much and says he left out small projects from years ago just to seem relevant to the job.

“I would rather speak confidently about something tangential or something perhaps unrelated but still related to technology” rather than over-customizing and then fumbling with interview stage.

He also liked that his resume included links to his personal website and project work on GitHub. Instead of sending out a long resume, links can provide more information if the hiring manager is interested.

Do you work in technology, consulting or finance and want to share a story about your personal CV journey? Please contact me at: [email protected].