The job market can be challenging and opaque, and figuring out how to get hired can be an exercise in frustration. We recently spoke to recruiter Martin Ngo to gain some insight into how recruiting works at Meta—where he worked from 2017 until just recently.
Martin spent four years managing a Starbucks in the Bay Area before joining Meta’s Sourcer Development Program. From there, he worked his way up to be a Senior Technical Recruiter, specializing in the most demanding technical niches like machine learning. Martin knows the recruiting process inside and out from one of the most desirable companies for job seekers.
Here are his insider tips for job seekers to gain an edge when trying to attract the attention of recruiters.
Have the Right Keywords in Your LinkedIn Profile
We asked Martin about the Meta recruiting process. He told us that the first step was talking to the hiring manager to learn how quickly they needed to fill the position, the must-have skills, and the nice-to-have skills. From there, he would build a list of keywords that he would use to search LinkedIn for candidates.
Two key takeaways for how to get hired: LinkedIn is invaluable, as is having the correct keywords in your profile to show up in recruiter searches.
The trick is finding the correct keywords to put in your LinkedIn profile. Here are a few ideas:
- Scour job listings similar to the job you want.
- Evaluate LinkedIn profiles of experts in your field.
- Look at current employees at your target company to understand their skill sets and experience.
A handy tool for spotting keywords is a word cloud. Copy a resume or a job listing and paste it into a free word cloud generator to spot the most commonly used words.
Martin also said that it pays to put links to speaking engagements and personal blog posts on your LinkedIn profile, to show that you are an active participant in your field. Martin says it shows more context about you beyond what’s on your resume, and it highlights soft skills like presentation and communication.
Have a Blog and Tell Your Story
One of the more surprising revelations in our interview with Martin is that he often sought out personal blogs of candidates for more information. In the age of social media, personal blogs are often viewed as quaint and outdated, but they are still a powerful marketing tool.
“I like blogs…I’d research their own personal blogs and what they’re saying to help me better understand their work,” Martin says. “There’s only so much a candidate can share on their one- or two-page resume or on their LinkedIn.”
Years ago, Michael Ellsberg shared similar advice in his article, “8 Steps to Getting What You Want… Without Formal Credentials.” Ellsberg recommended using a blog to document your journey of learning about a field by reading a book about that field every week and writing a blog post about it. It seems like that advice from 2011 still holds up.
But the value of a blog can go beyond demonstrating your professional qualifications. Martin told us he also sought out personal stories that demonstrate character.
“One of my candidates had a beautiful story on their journey from a third-world country to the United States, and how they broke into tech. That was a beautiful story and journey and helped me to understand that they’re motivated and can handle hardships and challenges,” Martin says. Of course, the candidate met the qualifications, but that story helped push them to the top.
Use TextExpander in Your Job Search
Pretty much everyone who’s ever had a job knows that the job hunt is a numbers game.
“When you’re on the job hunt, it gets tedious to type out the same information over and over again,” Martin says. “Leveraging TextExpander reduces the amount of time I spend filling out applications.”
Martin recommends creating Snippets for things you have to fill out over and over again in job applications, such as your:
- Top skills
- Cover letter
- Why you want to work for a company
- Work summary
Don’t Neglect Your Soft Skills
Most of us primarily think about our hard qualifications, especially for technical roles, but recruiters and other experts often talk up the importance of soft skills, which are hard-to-teach interpersonal skills.
But which soft skills do recruiters look for? Martin offers the following list:
- Openness to feedback
- The ability to give constructive feedback
- Sales and influence, specifically being able to develop an idea from ground zero and be able to sell leadership on it
- A desire to consistently want to grow and learn
“We of course get folks who are domain experts in their field, which is great, but it’s also great to see someone who says, ‘Hey, you know what, I’m maybe an expert and a pro but I still know there are new things to learn, and I want to learn them there,’” Martin says.
Being noticed by recruiters takes having the right balance of both core competencies and people skills.
“It’s the right balance of hard and soft skills because someone can be the best machine learning engineer, but if they can’t present in a room of people, then it’s going to be hard for them to work with teams, get buy-in, and so on,” Martin explains.
Come up with stories demonstrating how you exhibit these traits and highlight them on your blog and LinkedIn profile.
Resumes Are Still Important
It’s all too common for job hunters to submit resumes over and over again and never hear anything back. We imagine recruiters with impossible piles of resumes in their inboxes and wonder if it’s even worth the trouble.
Martin says that while they found most of their candidates through LinkedIn, resumes are still “absolutely important” when sharing a candidate with hiring managers.
“Resumes are super important when you’re sharing with your hiring managers, because they want to see the nitty gritties of the person’s experience and whether they align with the opportunities that they have on hand,” Martin says.
Martin’s advice on resumes is likely similar to what you’ve always heard: keep them short and to the point.
“People who are concise and are able to keep that narrative very clearly on their resume. I think that’s a huge plus,” Martin says.
“What we don’t prefer to see is a 10-page resume. I feel like you can be more concise,” Martin adds.
What about GPA on a resume? Martins says that’s largely up to debate except for one detail: “If you had a low GPA, please do not put that on there,” he says. It might be more important for new grads, but otherwise you can leave it off if you have experience.
