When Keith Anderson, 36, came across a job posting at Meta (then Facebook) while scrolling LinkedIn in 2018, he was feeling completely drained.
He was in his third Big Tech role — working as a program manager at YouTube — after spending two years at Google and two years at Uber since breaking into the industry with no tech experience in 2015.
“I’d hit a wall,” Anderson, who now runs Career Alchemy, told Business Insider. “I was physically exhausted and emotionally depleted.”
A few months later, he beat out 2,000 candidates for the Meta role.
He wanted a dramatic career shift
Anderson wanted something new and resonated with Meta’s mission, so he applied for the role on the global education team.
After three months of silence, he was invited to an in-person finalist event at the company’s headquarters. The hiring manager at Meta told him he’d been selected as one of 300 top candidates from 2,000 applicants.
He said that email alone felt like a win, but it was short-lived when he realized the stiff competition he’d need to one-up to actually land the job. He decided he’d try something different to stand out from the crowd.
Here’s the five-part strategy that Anderson used to ultimately win the job offer from Meta.
1. Using curiosity and connection points to overcome imposter syndrome
When Anderson first arrived at the event, his excitement turned to anxiety. As an employee who came from a background in teaching, imposter syndrome started to grip him.
“I reminded myself that curiosity is more powerful than self-doubt,” Anderson said. “Instead of trying to impress anyone, I approached team leaders and engaged them in meaningful, peer-level conversations.”
Anderson said the event started with 30 to 45 minutes of networking. Next, five team leaders presented on the state of the team, explaining their goals. The team leaders then spread out around the room to talk to candidates.
“There were like 15 to 20 folks swarming around each of them, awkwardly trying to get their chance to ask a question,” Anderson said.
Anderson worked the room, saying things like, “I just learned about the project your team’s been working on, and I’m impressed by what you’ve achieved! My team’s facing a similar challenge, and I’m curious: how has your team approached that balance?”
He said the goal wasn’t to deliver a pitch but instead create a conversation rooted in genuine interest and shared experience.
2. Following up with a warm, non-pushy message
Anderson initially didn’t get a callback, so he sent a warm, friendly voice note to the recruiter.
“I thanked her for inviting me and reflected on how humbling it was to be in a room with such incredible talent,” he said. “I mentioned my conversation with one of the team members and even included a helpful tool we used on my current team at the time, asking her to pass it along.” Anderson believes that the most important part of his message wasn’t what he offered — it was how he framed it.
“I told the recruiter, ‘I know your plate is full juggling candidates for multiple roles and navigating the needs of different hiring managers. If this role doesn’t work out, no worries. I just wanted to say thank you,'” Anderson said.
Within 48 hours, the recruiter called Anderson back to schedule a formal screening for the role.
3. Turning the screening into a strategy session
Anderson viewed the phone screening as an opportunity to gather intelligence about both the company and role.
“I wanted to understand the team’s internal goals and pain points before I ever stepped into a formal interview loop,” Anderson said. He asked questions like “What are the top priorities for this team over the next quarter?” and “How does this role contribute to those broader goals?”
The recruiter provided valuable insight into the team’s dynamics and signaled that he understood how to contribute at a high level.
4. Building a ‘value project’ to show understanding of team pain points
After the phone screening, Anderson sent a warm follow-up email that led to an invitation to speak with the hiring manager. To prepare, he created a four-slide ‘value project,’ — a mini case study based on a challenge faced by the team he was trying to join.
“I gathered intel on the main pain points the team was facing,” Anderson said. “From those, I took the one that seemed the most pressing and created a simple project from that.”
Anderson’s value project included:
- A short overview of what he understood about the team’s current structure
- A breakdown of one key challenge, informed by conversations with the recruiter and event contacts
- Examples of how other companies were solving similar problems
- His personal experience addressing this kind of challenge
- A few practical, creative solutions tailored to Meta’s ecosystem
Anderson invited the hiring manager and others who interviewed him into a conversation to discuss it.
“I framed it with, ‘I’d love to get your thoughts on this,'” he said. “Suddenly, I wasn’t just a candidate answering questions. I was a collaborator helping solve problems.”
5. Making yourself easy to remember
The recruiter sent Anderson an email with the names of the people he was going to meet with. Anderson sent brief, friendly email introductions to each of his future interviewers, expressing his excitement about speaking with them.
During the actual interviews, Anderson made a personal connection with the hiring team. “At the start of each call, I asked, ‘What’s been the highlight of your day so far?’ he said. “It’s warm, it’s disarming, and it instantly transforms the tone of the conversation.”
About five months after applying, Anderson received a job offer from Meta for an instructional designer role — his entry position that he later parlayed into a management role as head of learning, global agencies, over his three years at Meta.
Anderson’s manager told him something he’ll never forget
“After I started, my manager told me, ‘If you hadn’t accepted, we would’ve restarted the entire hiring process — no one else came close,'” Anderson said. “That kind of validation reminded me that thoughtful risk-taking really does pay off.”
Anderson said that this hiring experience taught him you don’t have to follow the traditional script to be taken seriously in Big Tech.
“Throughout every step of the process, I anchored my message: I’m someone who notices problems early and works toward clear, communicative, creative solutions,” he said. “My goal was always to show, not tell, who I was through every interaction.”
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