✔ Large companies: Companies with more than 1,000 employees, such as Fortune 500 companies and large tech companies including Yahoo!, Google, and Facebook have high standards for hiring employees. Given the number of applications they receive for each open position, recruiters at these companies usually use a strict screening process and grant interviews only to people who have a computer science, math, or engineering-related major. However, for those people who do pass the hiring screen and are eventually hired, there are many resources, both formal programs and people who can help coach and train you to increase your skills.

      ✔ Medium-sized companies: Of the three types of companies, getting hired at a medium-sized company can be hardest. With their large recruiting departments, candidates have to interview with as many people as in large companies. In addition, medium-sized companies typically do not spend as much money on training as large companies.

      ✔ Startups: With less than 20 employees, startups often desperately need coding talent and are small enough to make hiring decisions quickly. They don’t have a formal recruiting staff, so you should develop a personal connection with the person doing the hiring. Startups don’t have extensive training programs, and you are expected to contribute immediately. However, the small company size should help you form personal relationships with your engineering coworkers, who can help answer questions and informally train you.

      ✔ Government: City, state, and federal governments and their agencies have thousands of internship and full-time job openings for coders. Depending on the agency, the application process can be time consuming, and require proof of U.S. citizenship, extensive background checks, and completion of qualifying exams. Applicants can use www.usajobs.gov to search across all federal opportunities, and individual state government websites for opportunities in a specific state or city government.

      Yoonie Kim has been a recruiter for technology companies for almost 15 years. She has held recruiting roles at Codecademy, Ning, Meetup, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. I asked her the following questions:

      ✔ Can you share a little about your work experiences?

      I’ve worked at tech companies of all sizes and stages. I started my career at Microsoft, and worked at large established companies like Amazon and Google, all the way to small and early-stage companies like Ning and Codecademy. I also cofounded my own recruiting company to help smaller startups build out their initial engineering teams. In 2014, I joined Dropbox to help build out the New York and Seattle presence and offices.

      ✔ How do you attract and screen candidates?

      People use and have heard of your product, that helps, but I also reach out to candidates when employees refer them to me, and when I see candidates’ work online in a blog post, open source project, or talk. When I screen candidates, I’m usually looking for what they’ve accomplished, and whether they have actually built something meaningful or just maintained a product. Most interview processes start with a phone screen and then on-site interviews, but I try to personalize the interview as much as possible for the candidate. If you have less coding experience, you might be asked about something you just built, while more experienced candidates will jump into a hard problem the company is currently solving.

      ✔ What do you screen for?

      At the resume stage, I’m always looking for something interesting that will excite the team and make people want to have a conversation with the candidate. In the actual interview, I’d say 70 percent of the evaluation is technical ability, and the rest of the evaluation is a combination of soft skills and cultural contribution. I used to look for a specific candidate profile, usually a computer science degree and previous tech experience, but I’ve become more open to people without college degrees, career switchers, and people who have taught themselves to code. I have recruited a few self-taught programmers, and they have gone on to have incredibly successful careers within companies.

      ✔ What is a mistake everyone makes in the recruiting process?

      Have a story both about what you have done previously and what you want to do at the company where you are now interviewing. Sometimes candidates don’t have much to say about a topic they should know a lot about – themselves! Also, have a product or a feature you want to work on if you’re given an offer. It can be hard to advocate for candidates who don’t express any preferences.