How to apply for off-campus placements at product-based companies?

Disclaimer: This article was written few years ago and may no longer be relevant as software engineering has changed a lot in the last few years. This is what may be more relevant now: Future of Software Engineering - Gaurav Chandak

You wish to apply to top product-based companies like Amazon, Flipkart, Google, Microsoft, Uber, etc but they do not visit your campus.

You want to work in a fast-paced environment at an exciting startup but it is too early for them to come for campus placements.

What to do in such cases?

You can apply for off-campus placements.

Off-campus placement is when you get placed at a company without your college being involved in the process. In case of off-campus placements, you need to directly send job applications to the companies that you wish to join.

It opens up a wide variety of job opportunities for you which your college would not be able to provide otherwise. So if you belong to a Tier 2/3 college or if you are looking for a job opportunity in your dream company that does not visit your college campus, you can always apply using the off-campus process.

How to apply?

There are four major ways through which you can apply for an off-campus job opportunity in a company:

Careers Page
Job Referrals
Hiring Challenges
Talk to a Recruiter

Careers Page

Almost every company has a career page where they post all their job openings. Regularly check the career page and apply for a suitable job opening.

Where to find the careers page?

Open the website of the company you wish to apply to
Scroll to the bottom of the webpage
You will find the link to the “Careers” or "Job" page there

Link to the career pages of some of the top product-based companies:

You can also check for job openings on job portals like: workattech jobs, LinkedIn Jobs, AngelList, InstaHyre, Naukri, etc.

If you do not find relevant openings on the career pages, you can email the company by sending a proper application mail with your resume.

How to find the email address?

Google for "careers@replace_with_company_domain" and "jobs@replace_with_company_domain" and check if any of it comes up in the search results.

Job Referrals

The ratio of selections to job applications is extremely low at most companies. To increase this ratio, companies generally have an incentive program for its employees to refer people they think would be good hires.

A referral is a very good option to get an interview call from a company. Many companies skip the preliminary tests for referrals and start with the main interview process.

Referral Process at most companies:

You reach out to a person working in the company you want to apply to
The referrer then shares your profile with the recruiter
The recruiter gets in touch with you if your profile matches with the job requirements
Interview!

If you have seniors working at your dream companies then it should be fairly easy for you to get a referral. Otherwise, you can reach out to people on LinkedIn to get referrals. Tips: How to get job referrals on LinkedIn?

Hiring Challenges

Many companies host hiring challenges on platforms like HackerRank, HackerEarth, TechGig, etc. Most popular formats of such hiring challenges:

DSA coding questions
DSA coding questions along with MCQs on CS concepts.
Development challenges

Take part in these challenges and try to get a good rank. If you do well, you can get an interview call from the company.

Google, Facebook and CodeNation actively hire freshers through hiring challenges.

Talk to a Recruiter

Recruiters are people who either hire for their companies or for some other companies. It makes a lot of sense to directly reach out to them if you are looking for a job at companies that they are associated with.

Building a good LinkedIn profile can help you a lot in that. Tips: How to get a recruiter's attention on LinkedIn?

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Note that getting an interview call through off-campus placements is not as easy as on-campus placements. Unless you have an extremely strong background, you may have to apply to hundreds of companies to get a favorable job offer. The best time to apply is in the final semester preferably around April/May.

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