- Jigyasa Grover's résumés have helped her secure roles at Big Tech companies like Meta and X.
- Her strategy included highlighting academic achievements, technical skills, and leadership roles.
- As she's grown in her career, Grover has updated her résumé to emphasize her work's strategic impact.
Jigyasa Grover kicked off her career in Big Tech with an internship at Meta, scored her first full-time job at X, and is now a Google Development Advisory Board member alongside her current full-time role as lead of AI and research at the startup Bordo AI.
The San Francisco Bay Area resident, 29, had to be strategic over the last decade to achieve these experiences. Part of her strategy involved leveraging her résumé to win over Big Tech hiring teams.
"My résumé has always been structured to highlight a balance of technical prowess and practical impact, though the emphasis has shifted over time," Grover said.
The machine learning engineer shared with Business Insider two résumés that she crafted.
One helped her land her Meta internship in 2018 at 22 years old:
And another got her a full-time job at X the following year:
She walked us through the points she feels worked best about her résumés, along with insights she's gained along the way about which elements she would change today.
Breaking in — focus on academic background and "meticulously detailed" technologies
The résumé that Grover used as a college student to catch the attention of Meta focused heavily on her academic background.
"I made sure to list my GPA and highlight my top percentile ranking to demonstrate a solid academic foundation," Grover said. She feels that having a strong GPA at the University of California, San Diego and being selected to participate in the weeklong Cornell, Maryland, and Max Planck Pre-doctoral Research School helped her get her foot in the door.
Showcasing her self-starter attitude and non-traditional work experience
To demonstrate her proactive approach to learning beyond the classroom, Grover highlighted some international research internships she had participated in. She also flagged her active engagement in open-source projects like Google Summer of Code.
"This was a particularly important part of my application for early roles because it showcased that I'm a self-starter," Grover said.
Since she didn't yet have experience as a tech employee, she feels that listing these experiences was critical and "surprisingly effective," even though they weren't traditionally considered work experience.
Grover used the experience section to meticulously detail the various technologies she'd worked with, emphasizing the technical depth of each project. These contributions provided her a chance to show real code and impact as an active participant in the tech community.
"This was essential to show that I could handle complex theory as well as the practical implementations needed for AI/ML roles," she said. "Early-stage companies and Big Tech often looked for specific skills, so having a deep understanding of certain programming languages and various ML frameworks certainly helped."
Beyond technical projects, Grover also felt it was important to demonstrate leadership and community contributions
"I chose to include leadership positions at organizations like Women Who Code, Google Developers Group, and as a mentor in open-source communities to show my commitment to impact beyond my own work," she said.
This allowed her to differentiate herself from other candidates who may have only had academic or work experience on their résumés, and highlighted her soft skills like communication, collaboration, and strategic thinking.
"Leading and organizing events, mentoring other engineers, and presenting at conferences demonstrated my ability to contribute beyond just writing code," she said. "It showcased that I was more than just a developer, but also a community builder and a team leader, which ultimately helped me to take on more leadership roles at different companies."
Grover's full-time résumé followed a similar structure, but with an emphasis on impact
As she gained more industry experience, the academic section of her résumé became less of a focus and more of a "check the box" element. She kept the framework of her template the same but underwent a fundamental paradigm shift in her presentation approach.
"I began focusing on value creation, quantifiable business impacts, architectural decisions that exponentially scaled systems, and leadership initiatives that transformed an organization's capabilities," Grover said.
She added that while the experience section remained essential in establishing credibility and domain expertise, she learned how to transform this section from a mere checklist into a platform that demonstrates her unique professional narrative and value proposition to potential employers.
Emphasizing her research publications also helped add credibility to her work, demonstrate thought leadership, and prove her commitment to continuous learning.
"It demonstrated my ability to deliver projects with no external motivation," Grover said. "The fact that I built so many independent projects really showcased that I wasn't just following a set curriculum, but was also curious about areas of computer science outside of my comfort zone."
She also expanded the section for her awards, media features, podcasts, and public speaking to show additional achievements. Highlighting her top placements in multiple hackathons revealed her competitive spirit and willingness to innovate and push boundaries.
Grover believes that this combination of open-source work, research projects, strong academic performance, leadership experience, and quantifiable impact ultimately made her X application successful.
"Each element demonstrated a unique part of my skillset and showed that I was well-rounded and ready for the challenges of Big Tech," she said.
Knowing what she knows now, Grover would make some changes to her résumé
"In life, there's always room for improvement," she said. "I'd focus my résumé even more on strategic impact and cross-functional leadership."
While Grove feels that she's made solid progress in highlighting business metrics, she thinks she could further emphasize how her technical decisions aligned with broader company strategies.
She'd also consider these résumé changes:
- Restructure the publications section to more explicitly show how her work has influenced industry practices.
- Make the community involvement section more selective and focused on the most strategic impacts.
- Consolidate some of the technical project details to make room for more emphasis on team leadership and organizational influence.
One key learning for Grover has been that as you progress in your career, showing how you influence and drive change across organizations becomes increasingly important.
"My old résumé emphasized the 'what,' but now in the latest iterations, I try to emphasize the 'why,' the impact, and the overall story," Grover said.
Do you have a story to share about how you landed a Big Tech job? Contact this editor, Jane Zhang, at [email protected].
