a canadian startup

How to Get to an Interview at a Web 2.0 Startup

Trust me, you want to work at a Web 2.0 Startup. It might be your only chance to find work you love. There’s usually an XBox 360 or Wii to play with, the climate is exciting and fast-paced but never stressful, and you get to be a key player using cutting-edge technologies. It’s fun.

So now that you’ve decided you want to work at a Web 2.0 Startup, how do you get to an interview?

(I probably shouldn’t give tips to getting interviews while we have open job postings…)

You’ve got to think about it from the interviewer’s perspective — we get a lot of Word resume’s from people without a lot of experience. Not having a lot of experience is okay, I mean we’re using new technologies anyway, but we don’t have time to interview everyone that applies.

Here’s are my tips for sure-fire ways (read: tricks) to getting an interview:

1. Get a recommendation from a friend on the inside

If you know someone that works at my company, and they forward me your resume (or give me a heads-up), it’s pretty much guaranteed that I’ll meet you.

2. Send an email note with your resume (cover letter optional) that talks directly to me

Mention you want work for a Web 2.0 startup (so I know that this isn’t just one of 300 places you’ve applied). Refer to a joke we made in the posting. Say you’re passionate, and interested in new technologies. Tell me that my company is going to be the next big thing, because sometimes I forget (joking).

3. Name drop

If you’re friends with Ryan from The Office, I want to know. But that’s not what I’m talking about. You should name-drop on technologies that are new, sexy, and I would have heard about. Not plain old Java, CSS, or AJAX. I mean something new that shows you’re in the know. For example ExtJS, Django, CakePHP, Jetty, FLEX, Ruby-on-Rails, Amazon AWS, or jQuery. Mentioning Microsoft technologies may have adverse effects, unless you apologize afterwards.

4. Show me a portfolio

This is the number one thing you can do to help me realize that we want you. Startups are looking for people without experience, that’s okay. But how are we supposed to know you know what you’re doing?

It’s easy: build something. Anything. Build something using current technologies and send me a link. Of course if you made something big, like you’re the original author of Digg, that would be interesting. But even if you have a portfolio site with some small demos using jQuery, AJAX, or some other cool toolkit, I’ll be impressed.

You could build a quick FLEX demo in 12 days that will be one of the best things ever — because there aren’t a lot of good FLEX apps. Check this one out, for example, it uses an existing 3D toolkit and the code isn’t even that long. Or another idea is that you could build an ExtJS demo in less than 2 days that will make you look like you are a Web Genius — this demo is awesome and barely 50 lines long. It doesn’t even have to look that great or work completely. You’ll also feel good about yourself in the end.

Not ready to apply, but really interested in getting into the industry? Feel free to contact me and I can point you to some new technologies that I think are going to be the next big thing. Just tell me that you’re interested in working on new web technologies and want to know what technologies to play with. My email is [myfirstname@thiswebsiteaddress.ca]

(Picture was taken from here)