Keith Anderson went from teaching to Big Tech — he worked at Meta, Uber, and DoorDash. But he started his IT career at Google, even though his family thought it was unrealistic for a school teacher who had self-taught front-end development.
Keith Anderson went from teaching to Big Tech — he worked at Meta, Uber, and DoorDash. But he started his IT career at Google, even though his family thought it was unrealistic for a school teacher who had self-taught front-end development.
Nine years into his teaching career, Keith Anderson was fed up with his job as a teacher. "It was the low pay, the lack of insurance, and the lack of community," Anderson told Business Insider.
He dreamed of leaving his $27,000 salary behind and working for a big tech company like Google. His friends and family told him that someone with a background almost exclusively in education would never get an interview at a so-called “Big Seven” company.
Ignoring the opinions of those close to him, Anderson began applying for any position he could find at Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Netflix.
After sending out his resume to about 100 job openings and not receiving any responses , the man felt devastated. But he decided not to give up and hired a career coach . The coach further shook his confidence by telling Andersen to go back to teaching because he lacked technical education and experience.
The man then hired a resume writer who created a polished, ATS-friendly, keyword-rich resume. Anderson sent this perfect resume back to the tech giants—without success.
Doli tried using LinkedIn and sent over 50 cold messages to Googlers. Most ignored him, but when someone did respond, he tried to keep the conversation going.
Andersen also began seeking out support from like-minded people. He met with a group of teachers who were also looking to make a career change to provide support and advice. He also attended technology networking events and spoke with people transitioning from other industries.
Over time, Anderson noticed that a polished resume didn't reflect a person's uniqueness. It was this realization that changed everything and prompted him to take a completely different approach to resume writing.
1. Adding an "Interests" section and placing it at the top.
Yes, many people recommend putting this section at the end of the resume, and some even remove it altogether. But Anderson decided to try doing it his own way.
He redesigned his resume to reflect his true personality.
“It made sense to me because when I first met someone, I would share some unique information about myself to create a warm first impression,” Anderson said.
But the peculiarity of his approach was that instead of simply "I like to cook", he added details that could set him apart from the rest.
“Instead of saying something like, ‘I like to cook,’ I said I had entered a pie contest and came in third place,” Anderson said. “That little, weird thing made me stand out and made me human.”
2. Creating a unique selling proposition
Anderson needed to create a unique selling proposition that would help showcase his educational background as an asset, not a liability.
“I realized that combining my creative background — education, writing, and linguistics — with the analytical, technical side that I was building made me a more valuable candidate,” he said.
Anderson chose the phrase “Creative + Code” to communicate his brand. He made it a prominent part of his LinkedIn and portfolio messaging, and bolded it in his resume section.
"Creativity" is his ability to teach, communicate, solve problems, and offer a fresh perspective on things. "Code" is his technical and analytical skills, which he developed through coursework and self-study of Frontend development.
3. Adapting your resume to each individual vacancy
Anderson realized that he needed to create his resume for a specific audience, not a general one.
Since he was applying for a position at Google Hardware, he studied the problems these teams faced and adjusted his resume to show how his skills could solve those specific pain points.
Once he started focusing on the audience and the specific problems they were hiring employees to solve, he finally started to gain momentum.
4. Use of technical terminology
This point may not be as useful for experienced IT professionals, but for the teacher, the jargon of the technology industry was a problem.
“I didn’t know how to really talk about my experience in tech terms on the phone,” Anderson says. “It got me stuck in the interview process because it sounded like I didn’t fit the resume I had submitted.”
He began listening to conversations, interviews, and meetings with influential people in the tech industry. He took notes on key phrases and terminology he heard repeatedly and rewrote his resume using those terms.
After one recruiter review and six rounds of interviews, Google offered Anderson a job as a web developer in 2015. He worked at Google for two years before joining Meta, Uber, and DoorDash. In 2022, the man founded his own career coaching company, Career Alchemy.
Anderson recounted that a Google manager told him that he was hired because of his prospects, not his experience, and that he offered a unique combination of skills that they didn't realize they needed until he demonstrated them.
“You didn’t have to be the most qualified to get a job at Google,” Anderson says. “It was about clearly positioning yourself as a solution to a problem they didn’t even know existed.”
