If you’ve been part of my community for a while, you know this one thing about me. I got into Amazon with a social science degree, no “tech” experience, and zero connections in the field. And because I’ve done it before – I know for a fact you can do it too!
All you need to land a job in big tech is your previous experience. Yes, you read that right.
If you have 1+ years of experience, and you have solved problems in a non-technical field. There are effective ways to use your previous experience to land your next job in tech.
The amazing thing about tech companies is that they have all types of jobs.
Popular belief has it that tech companies only hire Software Developers, but this isn’t true. Tech companies need all the talent they can get. They need talent to sell, market, advertise, manage, and deliver their products.
That’s where your non-tech experience becomes important. Tech companies need the experience that only you have.
If you want to land a job in tech using your previous experience, you need to learn how to translate and reframe it. So in this blog, I will walk you through step-by-step how to leverage your experience to land a job in tech.
Before You Get Started
I recommend you start building a master resume.
A master resume lists all your previous experience. It’s not tailored to a specific role yet and it contains every single task you’ve done in the past.
If you don’t have a master resume, I recommend you create one. This will help you gain visibility into all your previous experiences. No matter how unimportant or small you think that experience might be, it’s all useful.
This will be the foundation of the next steps in this blog.
Step 1 – Highlight Important Words
Before you skip steps and start applying for jobs, you must get clear about the type of work you want to do more of. Do this on your master resume by highlighting the words related to work you love doing and you want to do more of.
Here’s an example:
While looking at my previous experience – I highlighted work I’ve done, enjoyed, and want to do more of in my next role. In the next few steps, I’ll show what to do with it and why it’s so important to this.
Step 2. Time to Search for Your Ideal Role in Tech
Now it’s time to search what roles exist in tech by using the words you highlighted.
- Open your dream company’s website.
- Go to their job board.
- In the search bar, start adding one or a combination of terms you highlighted.
- Adjust city, teams, types of work to match your needs.
In the example above, I want to land a job using my previous experience at Paypal. I adjusted the filters for my city and started plugging in some words from my highlighting exercise. I tried “project management”, “project”, “Tableau”, and “Data reports”.
As you see there are some roles I could apply to that aren’t technical. The next step will be to open the role and see that you match at least 65% of the requirements. Don’t get caught up with trying to match the requirements at 100%. All that matters is that you believe you can solve problems for this specific team and role.
Step 3. Translate Your Experience Into “Techie” Language
After you find the role matching your experience, it’s time to reframe your experience to match the job. This is the part where 99% of job seekers fail.
Remember, recruiters and hiring managers in big tech companies speak a different language. Let’s call this language, the “techie” language.
If you send out a resume without translating and reframing your experience. It’s like sending a letter in English to someone who only speaks Russian. Yes, they’ll see words but don’t understand it completely.
The goal is to have recruiters and hiring managers to understand your experience and value right away.
So here’s exactly how you’ll do that:
- Open the role you want to apply to.
- Start writing down verbs, commonly used words, tool names mentioned in the description.
- In your master resume, start replacing similar verbs and words, with the new word you found.
- Only translate experiences that are transferable to the role you’re targeting. Delete everything else.
If you want to know other ways to fix tech resume mistakes, check out my blog: 3 tech resume mistakes.
Step 4 – Reframe Your Experience
Congrats on translating your experience! Now whoever comes across your resume will be able to take in and understand your experience. Now it’s time to stand out.
You already have the right words, now you need to restructure its presentation. Here’s how you can do that:
Make sure each experience statement on your resume meets the following criteria:
- Transferable to your target role.
- Showcases your problem-solving skills.
- Contains numbers showing improvement, increases, decreases.
- Contains important tool names or strategies.
- Avoids any fluff words and unnecessary details.
And voila! There you have it, a professional tech resume you can use to land a job in big tech.
Last but Not Least
It’s completely normal to encounter imposter syndrome during this exercise. All you have to do is keep taking action.
Most of the negative self-talk that will come up in relation to your experience. Before you know it, you’ll start thinking:
“I don’t have enough experience to make the transition happen.”
“I’m an imposter”
Know this isn’t true. If I could do it, so can you!
During these exercises, your experience might match several different roles. Keep it simple by choosing one that aligns the most with your goals. Targeting various roles can result in creating a “generalist” resume.
Once you finish rewriting your experience, you can also showcase it on your LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a powerful tool for your job search.