The Google Resume: A Must-Read Even for Non-Tech People
date
Feb 1, 2023
slug
the-google-resume
author
status
Public
tags
Books
Tech
summary
type
Post
thumbnail
updatedAt
Mar 10, 2023 01:55 PM
If you are or want to be a Software Engineer, you must have heard of Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions. And the author, Gayle Laakmann McDowell has also written many other quality books. One of those is The Google Resume: How to Prepare for a Career and Land a Job at Apple, Microsoft, Google, Or Any Top Tech Company.
The book is not only crucial for those who want to have a job in the tech industry, but also for those who want to be successful in their career. I will show you why.
The Google Resume is the previous version of Cracking the Tech Career: Insider Advice on Landing a Job at Google, Microsoft, Apple, or any Top Tech Company. While the follow-up covers pretty much the same topics with some rearrangement and additional content, I will focus on the former book since I read that book first and, more importantly, I love its name.
Why is The Google Resume a great title?
As the title suggests, The Google Resume gives you lessons on how to get ready and land a job at a tech company, and two of the 13 chapters talk about the resume itself.
Additionally, it suggests how to network, how to deal with rejections and layoffs, how to leave a company in a good way, and gives some advice on graduate schools or MBA programs. Although some of the things may not be directly related to preparing for an interview, everything mentioned in the books will affect your ‘resume’ after all.
There are tips to make your resume look better, but a sheet of documents you’re going submit to your prospective employer is not the thing that you can make up out of nowhere.
What is the book about?
As Gayle has previously worked at Google, Microsoft, and Apple and started a tech company, she gives you a teaser of how life at a big tech company looks like and what are the differences between working in a tech giant and a start-up. Then, she shows you how to make yourself a good candidate so that companies will spend a lot of money getting you on their teams.
- What to do in college?
- What should you say at career fairs?
- Does GPA matter?
- How to prepare for technical and behavioral questions?
- How to communicate with recruiters and interviewers?
- How to evaluate offers?
- How to get promoted or a raise?
- Should you take a (few) years off for graduate school?
- …
You may find this information somewhere on the internet, but The Google Resume is a reference that when you open it, you can find the answers to all those questions from a person who has sat on both sides of the table.
Sometimes things may not go well. Perhaps you don’t like your manager, you don’t get the responsibilities mentioned in the job description, or you may be affected by a mass layoff like many others recently. How will you handle those situations? The world may be smaller than you think and you don’t want your future manager to hear bad things about you. You can find some thoughtful recommendations for those circumstances in Gayle’s book as well.
Another good thing about the book is that at the end of each chapter, Gayle attaches her answers to some specific questions from real-life examples.
Who should read it?
I wish I had read The Google Resume earlier, ideally before going to the university. If I have kids, I will let them read it when they are in high school so that they may know i) if tech is a career for them, and ii) what to do in college to increase their chances of getting better jobs.
If you want to get a job in a tech company, then of course, pick up a copy of The Google Resume as soon as possible.
If not, then it’s still a good learning resource for you. Although there’s uniqueness in tech companies’ culture, which may not be appropriate somewhere else, you will find something useful in this book.