Speaker A
You were at Amazon, you were at Oracle, you were at LinkedIn. So you have seen people from the other side. Or you've sat in rooms where you've probably seen kids getting hired.
Insights on how big IT companies hire, resume filtering, and the importance of practical skills over college prestige.
Key Takeaways
- Most resumes submitted are irrelevant to the job applied for, causing high rejection rates.
- Prestigious colleges act as a pre-filter for companies due to their rigorous selection processes.
- Hiring is expensive and slow, with companies struggling to find suitable candidates quickly.
- Technological advancements like AI are making recruitment more efficient and equitable.
- Industry demands skills not typically taught in college, creating a gap new hires must bridge.
Summary
- Big IT companies receive millions of applications for a single tech position and reject about 97% due to irrelevant resumes.
- Resumes often do not match the job requirements, leading to high rejection rates even before interviews.
- Companies prefer candidates from reputed institutes like IIT, MIT, and Stanford because these candidates have already passed strict filters.
- Hiring managers face challenges such as long notice periods and salary negotiations, making the hiring process costly and time-consuming.
- Startups and companies prioritize quick hiring and rely on established filters to ease the recruitment process.
- There is no inherent bias against students from lesser-known colleges, but practical constraints and talent availability influence hiring decisions.
- Technology and AI-based recruitment tools are improving fairness by enabling faster and more accurate candidate screening.
- If talented candidates from non-premier institutes prove themselves, companies will increasingly consider them for opportunities.
- The video highlights the gap between college education and industry expectations, especially regarding job-ready skills.
- Hiring is a complex, resource-intensive process where companies must balance quality, speed, and cost.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Right? You yourself were hired in them. So tell me, when there is a world-class hiring manager, there is an HR.
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We are sitting on that Amazon. Or he has to get hired for a position and on his table comes a resume from IIT and another resume from MIT or Stanford.
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What do we see in both of them? Okay. What is the difference? Why do MIT and Stanford students get preference or do they get it at all? Let me give you a simple example. I was in the US and my colleagues were from my college.
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He's looking at hiring at Netflix. Okay? Netflix is one of, I say one of the, which is an N in the manga is Netflix.
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Right? People here know Netflix mostly for Netflix series and shows. But I think it's one of the best tech companies to work for in the world.
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We, their employees, get a starting salary of ₹7000. Convert it to India. 6- That is seven crores.
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7 crores. I asked him, "Boss, how do you hire at Netflix?" He said, "Because I was working at LinkedIn at the time." He said, "We do it through your platform." I asked, "Okay, if you post a job, how many hits do you get on LinkedIn?"
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He cross-questioned me, "Tell me, how many hits do you get?" I said, "It probably gets 10,000-12,000 a week." He told me, "No, sometimes it even reaches 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 just for one job position itself." 3.4 million people apply for a techie position globally in
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a week. I then cross-questioned him, "Tell me, how many people do you outrightly reject?" He counter-questioned me, "Guess." He said, "Okay, maybe 60%, maybe 70%." He told me, "97%." Then I said, "Boss, what are you doing?"
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Is it a scientific question? Please, you're assuming there are so many roles being filled. They're being fired.
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But how many will be left after 97? Now I asked, "How are you firing 97% outright?" They said, "Boss, they're firing because the people applying are idiots." What people do these days, and I used to make the same mistake. I'm
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in college. I need a job. Now I have to write a resume. When I had to create a resume, I did a lot of research. I watched a few YouTube videos, watched this lecture, and after experimenting, I created a resume. I printed out a PDF of it,
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and now I'm submitting it to every company I see. The same resume, no matter which company it is. Our resumes are the same.
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They're telling me that if I apply for a data science position, most people submit random resumes.
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They're working in Java, but they're working in Python. That's the data science position I'm applying for.
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97-98% of people are completely irrelevant. Their resumes don't match the company's requirements. So, coming back to companies like Walmart, whose domain is very specific, they want to hire people who fit the specific needs from day one.
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So, the first filter criteria is whether the person exactly matches or not. Normally, 97% of them are eliminated.
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Okay? Now, the remaining 3%. This 3% is also a huge number. 9,000. Yes. It's not humanly possible.
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Look, hiring seems so easy from a distance. For a company, it's a big cost. I was in LinkedIn, and we were planning to hire a manager for our position. It's been a year and a half. You haven't been able to
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fill the position yourself. You keep interviewing, interviewing, interviewing. You keep interviewing, interviewing, interviewing. You never find a good candidate. If you do find a good candidate, their notice period is set at 2 months. By the time they've reached 2 months, they've negotiated their
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salary with another company, like Uber, and they've come up with a hire package. So it's very tough, right? So it's a huge cost. Now you have so many resumes.
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Look, it's not that companies are biased towards hiring from IIT or Stanford. It's more about the practicality of a company. If I'm running a startup, I know I have a trade-off.
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I don't have much time to hire, right? And in today's stiff competition, I don't have much time to hire.
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I need talent the day before yesterday. Right? And I wanted it yesterday. Right? That's number one.
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And second, there are so many people. I don't have the resources, nor the time or money to give everyone a fair chance.
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So, our society has already put in place filter layers. Criteria that students have to crack to get there. That allows me to ease that thing out. Look, no company has any problem hiring at X or G colleges.
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But when someone goes to an IT institute in Mumbai, where selected students are sitting, and conducts 10 interviews, two students get selected. But then he goes to X or G colleges where he conducts 10,000 interviews, and still can't
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find a single candidate, so he won't go there next time. That's the whole philosophy, and that's why, knowingly, unknowingly, no company will say that today. You say that boss, we only take students from the IITs, but when it comes to the
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hiring manager, they have to take a tough call, boss, I have to take them, they will go and prefer because then they think that these kids have already cracked the exam. The filter is already there and they end up doing it,
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right? So that's how it happens. So nobody knows if a company admits it as a company when I was in London, I used to say that boss, we don't care which college you come from.
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But ultimately, when I have a pile of resumes and I have to identify that I have less time, I have to interview only two students. Then I fall down to the practical day. You know, let's see what he has cracked before.
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And based on that, I decide. That's where you know the practicality. You are saying that the kid is from an IIT or he came from MIT. It doesn't matter what he's like. The only difference is that society has already established that
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MIT and Stanford are top-tier. So pick his resume. Yes, and then give him the first chance. If he meets our criteria, then to hell with it. The other 10,000 students can come from anywhere.
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Right? And if that starts to change, right? We start to realize, "No, this is an institute, and if I go there and one out of five students seems to me to be truly talented. He's ready to work." I think people will be interested in going there.
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No one has any personal attachments. If I were to talk to a hiring company, if I went to a private college, I'd be treated like a royal. Right? I'd be fed delicious food. I'd be given all the amenities
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so you'd come back for hiring. If you went to an IIT, you'd be treated like a royal. A single room is given in a guest room. There's no catering to you. Right? So you don't get much benefit. You're just getting
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the right talent yourself. Right? There are no incentives. Right? So that's a mindset that's slowly changing. Because of technology, because of which, in the past, all these things had to be done manually. Now, many rounds are conducted online. They're conducted
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through AI. So, even students from other institutes are getting fair chances in them. Because now machines can do much faster, much better than the human themselves.
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Plus, the change will also be coming, not that students who aren't from IIT or MIT will come online or do something else.
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Whatever the results, they're good, and if they break into the company, then the next 200 will be... Chances will be created for them because they are looking at probably correct. It's not just the kids who crack it, other crackers are also good.
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Yes, yes, yes, yes. Tell me one, when you go to work in all these big companies like Amazon, Oracle, PayPal, tell me which are the top three skills that the company expects you to know on day one, and this is the gap, no institution teaches this.
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I will tell you about three different types of companies and tell you the expectations of all three.
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Right? What they don't teach on day one in college. Correct, correct. All three have different expectations which you don't learn in college and you have to fulfill in the industry. The first is service-based compani
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and then when I am saying that I have full respect for them, because they are giving employment to the countries and no one else is. So have a full respect for them.
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They. But what's the nature of their business? You come there on Day One. They'll assume, " Boss, you didn't learn anything in college." There 's an Infosys company where you go, you undergo six months of training.
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They assume, "My dear, even if you're a college student, you have n't been taught anything about computer science. I'll have to train you for six months before you start working for me. I'll deploy you for one client, another, and a
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third." So, any service company will train you first. Day One will be spent training, and then, once you're trained, you'll be assigned to a client. Now, what's the client's system?
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What are their expectations? Is it a basic minimum? The client asks you to build a website.
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You build it. Your job is done. Now, when hiring their expectation is that you should n't be too aspirational. You shouldn't expect a high salary. You should be working for a long period of time. I'll tell you, when I was
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graduating from IIT in 2011, there was a joke going around: "Friend, these mass recruiters will come with all due respect. Infosys, Proteus, they bring trucks and then take you to factories and put you in." And when they came, they would
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n't interview nine-point recruiters. They would n't interview eight-point recruiters. They would n't interview seven-point recruiters at all.
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Because they knew that even if this kid came and joined, he would leave after a month. They were only interviewing six-point recruiters.
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They knew that if he wasn't doing anything, he was n't doing anything. He was bound.
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Other companies wouldn't entertain him. If they took him, there was a chance he'd last at least two years. Right? That's the expectation from this kind of person. So they have a very fixed attitude. If you go to a service-based company,
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it's also scripted. They've created a proper script. They'll come on Day One and give you this training. You will be given training.
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When the training is over, your client will call you. You will be deployed with the client. The client will give you a project and you will work on it. You will be shown a dream that you will be sent to the US. You will be
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sent to the UK. Now this is also a big one. You know, people think that people from India are going to the US after working in TCS Wipro. I will tell you that life is very miserable. Right? Why? In
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an average Silicon Valley, which is a top city in the US, the average salary is around Rs. 120. In San Francisco, I am talking about San Francisco, an average salary of Rs. 100-120 crore. This is Rs.
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1.25 crore. Okay, these are the people who have actually cracked the recruitment process and are working in companies there, top level and top level. This is just the starting point. The top level ones are of Rs.
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300, 400, 500. Netflix, Google are playing much higher than that. Now, when these people who go through this to TCS Wipro Infosite, then the people who are going from here, they are given Rs. It is said that you are
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going to America but they are deployed in small villages of America. Where they are getting 60, 70, 80 rupees which if translated then 70, let's say salary appears to be around 56 lakhs to 60 lakhs.
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But as per that, this is not enough. Now that small life there is visible from here that you are living the American dream right, you are going there living a lavish life but there you take a small room and are
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saving money, your full intention is that for the number of days you stay there, you eat a little less, stop travelling, do all the cleaning yourself, I just save from safe to safe save, two to three years come back
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and you know build a house and buy a car there itself, so this salary of 50, 60 lakhs that you get there, you live in San Francisco or in a small village, you live in a small village, so firstly
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you are not getting the exposure of America. You seem to think people here think you're living the American Dream, but you're living in a village there. Right? You're a trucker living in a small village there.
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If you can afford to travel all over America, you won't have a single penny left.
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Right? And then you're living the life of a miser. I'm saying you're leaving your friends. You're leaving your relatives. You're leaving your country.
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Right? You did it because you wanted a good life. And you're going to a small town there.
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You're living downtown in a village. You're living in a small village. And then you're not enjoying life if you're living the life of a miser. What's the point of doing all of that stuff yourself?
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What were they asking you at Lindin? I had seven rounds of interviews at Lindin.
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Right? In which of the different rounds they wanted to Check different things. Crazy. For example, the first two rounds were all about me going for a senior position. But they still wanted me to see how much hands-on coding I could do. Right? So they
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asked me about the different data structures, algorithmic questions, all the tough ones, different varieties of questions. And that was in the domain in which they worked. For example, there's a lot of work on a data structure called a graph on Lindin.
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Because you do a lot of multi-level searching. Right? For example, when you search for your own profile or someone else's profile on Lindin, you find out if there's a second-degree connection or a third- degree connection. So that's a lot of
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connections, right? That's being done underlined by a concept called a graph itself. So I was grilled a lot around graphs. After the two rounds, then they asked me to design a system that I would show you. The question was saying that many times
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you have to go on the floor and you don't know boss that this problem has not been solved by anyone, there is no readymade answer to it, it was not taught to me in the book, my professors did not tell me, no one
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knows about it on the internet, how do I solve it, so for that they put you some unknown situation, hypothetical situation, how do you react in this, how will you design it, how will you solve it, there are two-three rounds of that,
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when you go and discuss that, okay the third one they go deep down, it is a very good round of Intel, where they will ask you boss, tell me one of your strengths or one use case which you have
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solved in previous companies. Come well prepared, give me an advance and then I will go over it and you will grill you. I will give you a proper piece of the code, my developers will sit with you, will try to
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understand. It serves two purposes. One, it actually grills you from the inside. You ca n't fake it. And second, when you sit down with their people, the team also realizes, "Will I be able to work with this person
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?" Because culture fit is also equivalent for these kinds of companies. So, they check culture fit, and also see how you're working as a team and whether you've actually done the work.
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And once all of this is done, the final round is the manager. The manager then evaluates whether the boss is a good fit for his team.
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The good thing about companies like Lindin and Microsoft is that before hiring a new person, their entire team is directed to say, "The next person coming in should be better than at least three-quarters of the team." And that's how you improve
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the bar. This is a barrage right. You want the next candidate who is there.
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Coming should be better if you come and teach something, right? Like in your podcast, everyone should come and teach something.
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New people should learn something. I think that's what I like them the most. So, I had about seven interviews. I think this process lasted a month, but that was a very enriching experience. And that's how you know what I got
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into Amazon. What was my experience like because I've heard Amazon hires one of the top similar companies. I think even smaller companies like Amazon, Linden, Google, and Uber have raised the bar. And so, when I applied to Amazon, it was a slightly
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junior position at that time. So, what normally happens in tech? When you start from zero to one, the most focus is on coding in the 0 to 12 years. They'll ask you about data structure algorithms.
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And what about in big companies? They don't matter. I said, if Walmart wants to hire, they need a Java developer.
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So, they only need a Java developer. But if Amazon, Google, or Microsoft are hiring, they never force you to know only one technology. They work on almost every technology, and the tech keeps changing.
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So, they don't want anyone who comes along with the slogan, " I'm a Java developer," and I'll only code in Java.
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So, they're looking for people to say, " I'm a software developer." Today, I was working in Java. Tomorrow, I'll work in Earling. The day after tomorrow, I'll work in C++. Tomorrow, a new language comes out. I'm open to
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learning and doing it. That's what openness requires. So, Google says, "Boss, you can come to the interview and code in any language." That's more than I'm forcing you to interview in Java.
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Right? So, computer test, that's it. Yeah. So, they keep it very open. There, just say, this is a generic term. Computer Science round typically. So, I was in Amazon in my early years. So I'll just complete it. So the
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different faces in which the companies judge you. When you're early in your career, select zero to three years of experience. The more focus will be in the coding rounds. Okay.
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So, they'll give you problems based on technical knowledge. Technical knowledge and a problem. They'll give you a problem, and you'll have to write code in the language of your choice. And that covers most of your rounds. There are four rounds, so
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three of them will be yours. The final round will be the HR round and the manager round.
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When you grow into a little dipper, right? So, you'll have two rounds of coding, and then two rounds of unknown situations, which is what it's called, the system design round.
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Right? So that they can decide that the child can now code, and then he can be in the senior position if he has a new problem. It's only when you're able to decide how to scale it for billions. As you get more senior,
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your coding rounds reduce to one. Because you might not be writing code every day, but then you have to make those business decisions, those decisions about how to scale it. And that's where your system design rounds come in.
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So, when I was interviewing at Amazon, I was in two initial rounds, where I probably had all four rounds of coding. And that's one of the toughest questions that you can figure out.
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And that's why I say that when you prepare, don't look for shortcuts. Right? When I was preparing for IT, a physics teacher told me a very good thing: whenever you're taking practice exams for IT exams, turn off the fans in your room. Right? Make sure
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that's one of the hardest situations. I'm sweating. Taking an exam. Because you don't know that on the day of your exam, the power in the room suddenly goes off.
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And your exam gets ruined because you've always taken exams sitting on a comfortable chair. So make sure you're sitting in an uncomfortable situation. Make sure the room's ambiance is absolutely bad so that you're in tune even during that time.
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And if your exam is from 9:00 to 12:00, then at home, take the exam between 9:00 and 12:00. It's not like you're taking it at 12:00 at night.
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So that your body is also tuned for it. Right? The same thing is here as well. Right? If you want to clear an Amazon interview, or if you want to clear a Google interview, look, solving a question while sitting at home is a
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very easy thing. Right? I'm taking the question and I'm sitting in my room on my sofa. I am sitting there. I am chilling.
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And I have to write. My brain will solve it 200%. But in the same way, if I am sitting in an interview. Let's say that Raj, you are from Facebook and I am singing here and you throw me a question. At this time,
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four things are going on in my mind. Will I be able to do it or not? If I do it wrong, my chance of getting the interview is gone.
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He is judging me in front of me. I am writing a line and I am feeling the pressure of what he is doing. And it is such a tough situation. Amazon is a big company. I cannot make an effort to lose it. I have got a lifetime
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opportunity. So, the same problem which I would crack very easily when I am sitting at home.
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I have no chance of cracking this problem right now, and for that, I have to be prepared for that kind of situation. Which cannot happen. If I am doing an online course only. Which Ca n't happen. I'm doing everything in comfort.
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Right? And that's the difficulty. That's why the problem is, if Amazon wants to hire one person, they probably interview 500 people, and then they end up with one person as a software developer. They do it at the top. No doubt but then these people deserve it because they have learnt how to
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crack it. Okay, right? So that's how you know, my entire round was four rounds, fully grilled, where they asked all those new questions which I probably had never seen before.
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But I was fortunate enough that I worked hard and cracked the code of criticism, you know, cracking those questions in real time and I was able to do it. Thank you so much for watching this video till the end
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and subscribe to Rajmani Clips channel for such informative and educational clips.
Topics:IT hiring processresume screeningtech recruitmentAmazon hiringLinkedIn jobsNetflix hiringIIT recruitmentjob marketAI in hiringindustry skills gap
