How to Get a Job at a Tech Company for Public Policy Professionals
While working as a user experience researcher at Facebook for the past 1.5 years, I heard from many public policy master’s students and professionals who were wondering if they could make a meaningful contribution at a tech company, and how to get a foot in the door.
Although I am now transitioning back to the public sector, I would love to see more public policy professionals in large companies like Facebook (which, I should say, does not endorse this post). The training in social science and deep thinking about national and global problems offers a valuable perspective. However, the path is not always obvious. Here is my advice for those interested in transitioning from public administration to tech, based on applicants I referred and helped through the process.
1. Gain and sharpen hard skills over regional or subject matter expertise.
After graduating from undergrad in political science, I was interested in environmental policy and Africa. I didn’t care much what I was doing, as long as I got to work on my passion projects/regions. In retrospect, this attitude was misguided. Although I got to live abroad and work for an organization I believed in, my personal work contribution was… underwhelming. I was becoming a generalist without many marketable talents. Luckily, I managed to gain some quantitative skills in grad school that enabled me to work on topics that are close to my heart while bringing more tangible skills to the effort.
You can be the world’s expert in Estonia or civil wars, but if you don’t also have specific skills that companies need, you won’t be seen as enough of an asset to land a job. It is easier to learn about a region, country, or subject on the job than it is to acquire a hard skill like statistical analysis, negotiation, or design principles. The specific skills you develop don’t have to include math or other subjects you may not like, but they should enable you to say with confidence, “I can do [this]!”
Examples of skills to seek out include:
- Econometric analysis, especially advanced statistics (research and data science)
- Regulatory expertise and familiarity with the political process (policy roles)
- Negotiation, business skills, relationships at key companies (partnerships).
- Product knowledge, leadership, familiarity with software engineering (product management).
- Writing with clarity and brevity, speaking multiple languages (content strategy)
2. Learn the roles that make up a product team and hone in on one of them.
If you can’t market yourself as one of the functions that companies hire for, you are unlikely to get a job. Tech companies like Facebook structure product teams as a composite of functional roles. If you have many different skills you may worry that you are pigeonholing yourself, but you simply must focus on a role that exists to get a job. Once hired, you will be able to work on different topics and approach problems from different angles. At Facebook, roles that are related to public affairs include the following:
- Policy manager: liaising with legal teams, knowledge of laws and policies around a specific topic/region, interfacing with government officials to represent the company’s interests.
- Partnerships: business development, negotiating contracts, working with partner companies to achieve shared or company objectives.
- Research (so fun, the absolute best): quantitative or qualitative research techniques like surveys, usability testing, and interviews used to assess market demand and identify product limitations and solutions. Must have skills in data analysis and statistics or qualitative interviews.
- Product management: leader of a product team who sets strategy and timelines to achieve objectives. Must have experience with product development and business; experience working closely with engineers is highly desired.
- Data science: advanced statistics with some programing required R, SQL, Python, etc.
- Content strategy: writing clear and concise phrasing and fixing grammar throughout apps and websites.
- Other less relevant roles for most include software engineering, data engineering, product design, product specialist, legal, marketing, and more.
Pick one of these roles and tailor your resume to show you can do that function. Focus on learning about the skills required, making contacts who do that job, and applying to those positions only.
3. Get product experience; have product conversations.
No matter which role you go after, you will be asked about product implications in the interview process. Product sense may be the biggest challenge I’ve seen for policy professionals in the interview process. Understanding products seems obvious— or it did to me — before you’ve really tried to do it. You just don’t get much exposure to what makes software products take off and grow while working at NGOs, think tanks, or international organizations. It’s important to focus on how the company thinks about their products, not just how you use them as a consumer.
If you don’t yet see a clear link from your experience to thinking about products, consider interning or volunteering with a consumer-facing product or service. This is not required, but will arm you with concrete examples about product development that you can use in your interviews, and will be a nice addition to your CV.
4. Don’t insist on being a manager right away.
We think of managers as being necessarily more senior than individual contributors (“IC” roles), but this is not the case in big tech companies. Manger career tracks are parallel to, not above, individual contributor tracks. This parallel structure helps to make sure that those who are not particularly skilled or interested in people management don’t get pushed into these roles as the only way to advance their careers.
After investing in a graduate degree, you may think that you should have a senior position and title that includes “manager”. You may be seeing classmates get jobs with impressive titles. But, because you are likely changing sectors, you need to develop expertise in tech before you can effectively support others in their jobs. For your first job in tech, it is easier to start in an IC role, learn by doing, and then transition to being a manager. If mentoring and supporting others is a passion of yours and you are good at it, you’ll be able to transition quickly.
5. Don’t shy away from general job postings, but try to learn about specific teams and roles.
One consequence of recruiting being designed to primarily hire competent engineers is “open allocation” hiring. The logic is that companies should hire people who could succeed on almost any team rather than hiring them for niche skills, because any given team can be short-lived. When applying to Facebook for example, you are unlikely to find a detailed job description that reveal substance about the teams that have openings. But specific roles on niche teams do exist. The recruiters are your key to this inside view.
Personally, I knew I wanted to work on internet.org if I were to join Facebook. But there were no job postings that specifically mentioned this team. Once I was referred by a current employee, the recruiters I spoke with were able to see which specific roles were available that matched my experience.
You may be able to do equally as much good outside corporate social responsibility or foundation roles.
Many policy folks I talk to are only interested in google.org, internet.org, and tech foundations. I get this. I felt the same way. But once on the inside, I saw that bringing a social responsibility vantage point to core product teams may be a more effective way to shape the highest priority corporate initiatives. So keep an open mind, and be open to applying your mission-driven attitude to various business challenges.
6. Traditional networking is less likely to directly lead to a job than in other sectors. But do have current employees refer you.
Because the interview process is highly structured, meeting with people for coffees and having phone conversations will not directly help you get a job. These people will have no say over your hiring process, which is probably a good thing (because nepotism). Informational interviews may still be valuable for learning about the position and company. But in my experience tech workers worship at the altar of extreme efficiency and are highly protective of their time: only ask for networking conversations if you have real, genuine questions or specific ideas or requests.
That said, an internal referral can be a key asset. The majority of hiring is done through referrals. (I actually think this is a terrible policy that hinders diversity by perpetuating preferences for only a few schools, elite networks, and even income levels, but we’ll save that topic for another day.) If you know someone who works at the company where you want to work, have them refer you. They will likely get a bonus if you get the job, so they’ll be happy to do so!). Do not cold LinkedIn message people asking for a referral. This will just annoy them and backfire.
Great! Now you’re ready to interview. Be prepared, but be yourself. And remember that you are also assessing the company for a potential fit that could make you happy and allow you to make your best contribution. If it doesn’t feel right, be honest with yourself.
Congrats, you’re in! Beware the golden handcuffs and don’t get too comfortable!
I know where your heart is, dear policy person. With some exceptions, you may not stay passionate about working at a big tech company for your whole career. Of course, when you are there pour your heart into it and make an amazing positive impact. But then, the public and non-profit sectors are going to need you back. So save a lot, mentally prepare yourself to take an eventual pay cut, don’t forget how to cook with all that free food around, and never stray far from your truest career passion and purpose.
Thanks to Will Tucker-Ray for exchanging ideas on this topic. If you find it helpful, hit the 👏!
