How to land a job at Reddit

When it comes to staff, Reddit is small but mighty. The social networking and news aggregation site has over 330 million monthly active users and just 300 employees.

"Every employee is responsible for over one million monthly active users, and you really don't see that at any other tech company," says Jeff Lu, head of talent acquisition and recruiting at Reddit.

By comparison, Facebook has about one billion active users and 23,165 employees — meaning their user-to-employee ratio is 43,198, a fraction of Reddit's.

Reddit grew its headcount by 100 percent in 2017 and is hoping to hire hundreds more employees this year. To fill those roles, Reddit employees are currently spending a collective 20 to 30 hours a day interviewing candidates.

Here's how you can land a job at one of the internet's most popular destinations:

If you do not have tech experience but are interested in a career in tech, bootcamps are a great option, especially for getting a job at Reddit.

Nick Caldwell, vice president of engineering says bootcamps are "a great source of talent." Since leaving Microsoft to join Reddit a little over a year ago, Caldwell has grown the engineering team from 34 engineers to around 100. This year, he plans to hire 100 more, and he'll be looking at bootcamps to fill some of these roles. He says that bootcamps like Hackbright, which helps women gain the tools necessary to launch successful careers in tech, and Dev Color, which helps train and support black software engineers, are more important and valuable than ever.

"At a time when it's more important than ever for Silicon Valley to focus on diversity, I think bootcamps are a great inroad for a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't have access through traditional academic routes," he says.

Clara Zavani, senior UX design manager, landed her job at Reddit less than a year ago through networking. "I was not a hard-core Redditor," she says. Regardless, when she went to meet a friend who worked at Reddit for lunch, she took the opportunity to meet as many people as possible.

"I ended up having a meeting with a Reddit exec who ran the product team and we kind of had a mind-meld," says Zavani. "It was supposed to be a 30-minute lunch but it ended up being like an hour and a half. So we obviously hit it off."

She asked dozens of questions but never asked for a job.

"My personal trick is showing up for meetings and never asking for a job," she says, noting that sometimes, job seekers become too focused on asking for a role while networking and miss the opportunity to make important connections. "I think that's the number one mistake that candidates [make] when they try to network."

Even if you do not ask for a job the first time you meet someone, be sure to stay in touch.

"Within 24 hours of your networking meeting, you need to send a thank you email. It's not enough to say 'Thanks so much' when you're in the room with the person," Danny Rubin, email expert and author of "Wait, How Do I Write This Email?" tells CNBC Make It.

Once you've managed to get an interview, the next step is to prepare for what's ahead.

Lu says there are three stages of the interview process. First, candidates have a warm-up call with a recruiter, followed by a one-hour introductory interview. Next, there is a technical screening session or a 30-minute interview with a manager, depending on the kind of role the applicant is applying for. For the third round of interviews, applicants have lunch at the Reddit headquarters and meet with managers and peers.

To prepare for this relaxed but nonetheless challenging process, Zavani says applicants should put together a list of the projects that they are most proud of working on. She also says that every applicant should practice common interview questions and prepare lots of questions to ask.

When you apply for a job at any company it is always best to take note of the company values. One of the most respected values at Reddit is "Everyone does the dishes."

"No matter if you're a new employee or someone who has been here for four or five years, it doesn't matter. No work is beneath you," explains Lu.

In other words, when you walk into an interview at Reddit, make sure you leave your ego at the door.

After conducting thousands of interviews, Caldwell says overconfidence is the interview misstep that's most difficult to overcome.

"The biggest mistake that I've seen is assuming that if you just like Reddit, then you'll get a job here," he says. "It helps to like Reddit, but it's not enough to get the job."

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