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After spending about 15 years working across some of the world’s biggest technology companies, Nigerian-American technology executive Emem Adjah is turning her experience in Big Tech into a playbook for Africans seeking careers in the global technology industry.
Adjah, whose career has included senior roles at Google, Spotify, Snap and X (formerly Twitter), spent much of her professional life working at the intersection of technology, advertising, monetisation and revenue growth.
Now an author, advisor and mentor to early-stage founders and technology professionals, she is using the lessons from her career to help others understand how hiring works inside major technology companies and how candidates can improve their chances of getting through the door.
Her journey, which began in Brooklyn, New York, has taken her from finance and international business into some of the world’s most competitive technology environments.
From Nigerian Roots to New York
Adjah’s parents were born in Nigeria, with her father from Cross River State and her mother from Akwa Ibom State.
Her parents initially moved to Brooklyn, where Adjah and her siblings were born, before relocating to New Jersey, where her parents currently live.
She has also visited Nigeria, including Calabar and Cross River, where she spent time with relatives.
Adjah studied international business at Northeastern University, completing a five-year programme that incorporated work experience into her education.
Before graduating, she had already accumulated experience at Citigroup, worked as an allocation analyst at TJX Companies, the owner of TJ Maxx, and conducted research at the US Embassy.
The early exposure to different industries helped her build a broad professional profile before entering the technology sector.
A Career That Moved From Finance to Technology
After university, Adjah received a Fulbright opportunity in Hong Kong, where she focused on China and East Asian studies.
Although she initially considered pursuing an academic career, she eventually decided to move into business and technology.
Her first major professional role was at Bloomberg, where she worked in financial sales and analytics, helping clients use the Bloomberg Terminal before moving into sales for international banks.
She eventually realised that finance itself was not her long-term interest, but the technology underpinning financial services was.
That realisation pushed her toward the technology industry.
The Google Rejection That Changed Everything
One of the defining moments in Adjah’s career came when she initially applied to Google and was rejected.
Rather than abandoning the goal, she looked for an alternative route into the ecosystem surrounding the company.
She joined MoPub, a startup founded by former Google engineers and product managers. Soon after she arrived, Twitter acquired the company.
The experience became a major turning point, exposing Adjah to the technology and business mechanics behind digital advertising.
She developed expertise in monetisation, particularly how technology infrastructure, advertising systems and auction-based purchasing affect revenue.
From there, her career expanded across major technology companies.
She spent time at Snap, working in sales strategy, before moving to Spotify, where she eventually became head of monetisation and managed the company’s advertising technology infrastructure.
She later returned to Google, this time in a senior monetisation role.
Inside Google’s Global Monetisation Machine
At Google, Adjah worked on bringing products to market while feeding market intelligence back into product development.
Her responsibilities included examining how Google could increase revenue while balancing advertiser returns, user experience and creator monetisation.
She managed a global team operating across Google’s international markets, giving her a broad understanding of how one of the world’s largest technology companies evaluates products, markets and talent.
Following organisational changes at Google, Adjah decided to use the transition to focus on a project she had been developing for years: a book on navigating technology-industry interviews.
The result was The Tech Interview, HACKED: 111 Tips on the Business Side of Tech.
What Big Tech Looks For
For Africans seeking opportunities at major technology companies, Adjah says candidates should understand that hiring goes beyond educational pedigree.
She identifies four broad areas that companies such as Google assess.
The first is cognitive ability the capacity to reason through difficult problems, learn quickly and operate effectively when circumstances are unclear.
She argues that candidates should not assume that attending an Ivy League university is a prerequisite for Big Tech employment. In some cases, even an undergraduate degree may not be mandatory.
The focus, she says, is increasingly on what a candidate has accomplished and the impact they can deliver.
The second is emergent leadership.
Companies want people who can take responsibility when necessary, but also understand when to step aside and allow others to lead.
Candidates may therefore be asked to describe mistakes they have made and what they learned from them.
The third area is role-related knowledge — whether an applicant understands the work they are being hired to perform.
However, Adjah stresses that candidates should not restrict themselves to jobs whose titles exactly match their previous positions.
Her own career demonstrates the value of transferable skills and the ability to explain how experience from one industry can apply to another.
The fourth is what Google famously calls “Googliness”, encompassing qualities such as humility, comfort with ambiguity, integrity and the ability to work effectively with others.
Hiring Is More Than One Interviewer’s Decision
Adjah also highlighted Google’s committee-based hiring approach.
Rather than allowing one interviewer to make the final decision, hiring committees assess candidates collectively.
The approach is intended to create consistency, reduce individual bias and ensure that different perspectives contribute to the decision-making process.
For applicants, this means succeeding in one interview is not necessarily enough. The overall evidence of capability, leadership, role knowledge and cultural fit must stand up to broader review.
Rejection Is Part of the Process
Adjah’s message to young Africans struggling to break into global technology companies is straightforward: persistence matters.
She says she has experienced more professional rejections than acceptances and believes candidates should treat rejection as part of the process rather than as a final verdict.
She also recommends expanding the way job seekers search for opportunities.
A person looking for an “account manager” position, for example, should also consider titles such as account director, customer success manager or sales manager, depending on the responsibilities involved.
The job title may change while the underlying work remains similar.
Networking Can Open Unexpected Doors
Adjah also credits visibility and networking with helping her access opportunities that might otherwise have been difficult to reach.
While at Northeastern, she attended corporate information sessions, including events at other universities.
She recalls visiting Harvard’s campus and attending company sessions despite being a student elsewhere.
She also obtained an interview opportunity with McKinsey through this type of networking.
Her advice is for candidates to attend industry conferences, university events and virtual technology gatherings, while paying attention to recruiters who publicly share their contact information.
Direct outreach, she argues, can sometimes work when traditional applications do not.
Mentorship Can Change Careers
Adjah’s interest in mentoring emerged from repeatedly helping people prepare for interviews and understand the technology industry’s unwritten rules.
She believes many candidates lose opportunities not because they lack ability but because they do not know how the hiring and compensation systems work.
She points to areas such as job levels, salary bands, equity, refreshers and sign-on bonuses as examples of information that can significantly influence a candidate’s financial outcome.
At Spotify, she said, a mentor gave her information about compensation structures that influenced important career decisions.
That experience reinforced her belief that access to the right information can have a lasting impact on a person’s career and finances.
Adjah also noted that many interview resources focus heavily on engineering, leaving fewer practical materials for candidates pursuing sales strategy, marketing, product management and other business-side technology roles.
Her book is designed partly to address that gap through practical guidance and case-study-style exercises.
AI Is Changing the Hiring Process
Artificial intelligence is also changing how candidates prepare for jobs and how companies evaluate them.
Adjah said organisations increasingly expect employees to understand how they would use AI in their work, while simultaneously warning candidates against allowing AI to replace their own voice during interviews.
Her advice is that AI should amplify a candidate’s capabilities rather than impersonate them.
AI can be useful for preparation, research and repetitive tasks, but candidates should understand and follow each company’s rules governing AI use during recruitment.
Recruiters Are Using AI Too
The impact of AI extends to the other side of the hiring process.
With hundreds of applications often competing for a single position, recruiters increasingly use automated systems to filter candidates before human review.
As a result, applicants may never receive a response even when their qualifications are strong.
Adjah argues that candidates should therefore use AI strategically to improve their job searches.
One example is generating alternative job titles that companies may use for the same type of role.
A candidate searching for one specific position can use an AI assistant to identify variations across companies and seniority levels, then incorporate those terms into job alerts and professional profiles.
She recommends revisiting those searches periodically because job titles evolve alongside the technology industry.
The Bigger Lesson for African Talent
Adjah’s career offers a broader lesson about access to global technology opportunities.
Breaking into Big Tech does not necessarily follow a straight path. Her own journey included an early rejection from Google, a move through a startup that was later acquired by Twitter, transitions between industries and eventually senior leadership roles at some of the world’s most recognised technology companies.
Her advice is therefore built around persistence, adaptability, networking and understanding how companies actually hire.
As AI reshapes both recruitment and the workplace, she believes African professionals will need to combine technical awareness with strong communication, problem-solving and domain expertise.
For the growing pool of African technology talent seeking global opportunities, the message is clear: a rejection does not have to close the door. Sometimes, it simply means finding another route to the same destination.
