Working in Google after BE from Tier 3 College,Possible?

Yes. Absolutely. My first job from campus was at Microsoft HQ in Redmond as a SDE in the much coveted Core OS team of Windows. Microsoft was at that time the world’s largest tech company and Windows was its crown jewel. I had 3 competing offers — from Google and 2 other tech companies. I didn’t go to a top university. That didn’t limit what kind of jobs I could get and this is despite the tech economy not being as hot as it is today.

Top companies hire thousands of people each year and it is very hard for them to fill solely on the basis of degrees. MIT and Stanford barely produce 100 odd CS majors each year. The same is true for most top notch schools around the world. And many of these graduates love to do something else besides working for a big corporation. While tech recruiters absolutely love students from top institutions they are also in the look out for top talent coming from outside the traditional academic system.

The reason recruiters look for top schools is because:

1. It shows strong work ethic and commitment. Getting into and graduating out of a top school shows that you can work hard. You might not be a genius, but you can work hard.
2. It allows easy checking for background. Reference checks are easier in top schools and there is a bigger element of trust. As a recruiter you don’t want to be embarrassed by the person you brought in.
3. It shows you can learn fast and will not be too intimidated.

If you didn’t go to a top school, you need to find ways to replicate the 3 things that recruiters look for.

1. Show incredible hardwork. If you had worked 2 years contributing to a popular Github project and have hundreds of commits to show for, it will be hard for a recruiter at Google or Facebook to not call you for an interview. Go way beyond your academics and stand out with contributions outside.
2. Build up trust by working with people that big companies trust. If you had worked on a big research project with a professor from a top lab or if you had published a good paper at a top journal or if a noted person in the industry can recommend you because you had impressed them with your intellect/skills, you satisfy the element of trust.
3. Show the ability to learn fast with your projects you have done off-school. Code for fun and build super interesting stuff. During your interview, if you could show well you thought through and built your projects, your interviewer can be quite impressed. I interview 100s of students from top colleges and I’m always astonished how few actual projects students have done. Most show cookie cutter, copied projects that any professional interviewer can see through (if you are from an IIT, please don’t show the ‘Ultransonic walking stick for the blind’ — I have seen it 300+ resumes now and I know you copied it).

Remember, the guy who has gone to a top institute has often worked quite hard to get in. To compete, you need to work twice as hard in college to make up for the lost time. No way around. If you don’t have anything interesting in college besides your mundane classwork & exams, it is super hard to rise up.

If you are from a not-so reputed college, here is the simple way out. Take the next year working for a coding project and spend 1500+ hours in it — code 4 hours a day, day after day for 365 days. I guarantee you, that is most likely to get you an interview to a top company. You can surely find 4 hours a day [there is a lot of pretend work you can do in a boring class, while you secretly hide your CLRS and build algorithms by hand] and 1 year is not too long given that you have messed up your high school by not being able to get to a good college. Don’t get sucked by the people around you — the masses are the most dangerous obstacles. You need to be nice to them, but you don’t need to be them.

-Balaji Viswanatha,BE from Thiagarajar College of Engineering,