4 ms·

> Wow, it's like they're fully aware of how poor many of their interviewing procedures have been over the years, and instead of making them more employee-friend

> Wow, it's like they're fully aware of how poor many of their interviewing procedures have been over the years, and instead of making them more employee-friendly to compete with the rest of the industry, they'd rather just punish the employees instead. I know, anecdote, but: I went through the Google interview process not too long ago. It was stellar. None of the other places I interviewed at could even come close to how well Google's process went. Take that FWIW.

deleted 11y ago
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dijit 11y ago
My experience was not so stellar. Interviewer tagged me and I thought I'd go along with it for the fun. I'm a systems engineer not a developer so YMMV. First stage interviewer put me through a basic aptitude test ("what is netstat?", "what's the expected output of dig?") which was fine and I answered them all with a fair degree of correctness but the questions quickly went on to different programming languages, and while I've done some small things and I definitely know my way around a bourne shell I didn't get spectacular marks honestly, mostly because he was asking programming questions and I haven't had as much exposure to code as I'd like. the next week I receive what I thought was a follow up call, but it was another round of preliminary questions.. around 2 questions in, and I realise these are the same exact questions I answered the week before. I'm a bastion of honesty, and while I knew the answers to all his questions now (because curiousity made me look up the ones I had failed.) I felt I should tell him that he asked me these questions before. I did.. he fell silent.. "are you sure" "Yeah, your next question is about netstat" ".. oh.. well I don't have your results" "Do you have any other questions to ask, you can reask me questions but my success rate will be higher this time" "no, we'll contact you in 6 months" Well, he didn't, but that process shook me a bit.. I certainly wouldn't call it stellar, and I'm likely blacklisted from interviewing at google now as I don't think I've had recruiter spam from them in a long time.
- x00gler123 11y ago
  But how could this have been a more stellar experience for you? Should they have given you a consolidation price? Job interviews are a business transaction (after all you are there because you want their money). Not hiring you is fair game and once they have decided/committed to pass on the opportunity it wouldn't be rational to waste money by continuing a pointless discussion.
  - mynameisvlad 11y ago
    I mean, not parent commenter, but I'd expect, y'know, the recruiter to actually remember giving the exact same preliminary interview to the same candidate a week earlier.
    - brianwawok 11y ago
      Was it the same interviewer? Maybe there are 10 interviewers going off the same script. Interviewer 1 called OP and asked questions. Then it was lunch time and he forgot to put result in the CMS. So the same guy popped up a week later to Interviewer 2. He was reading off the same script, so of course his questions are the same. Not his fault, or Google's per say - Interviewer 1 happened to forget a step. (Which is sad, but we all make mistakes!)
      - dijit 11y ago
        it was the same guy, we'd spoken before on Linkedin.
        brianwawok 11y ago
        Hah then shame on him ;)
      - mynameisvlad 11y ago
        > I felt I should tell him that he asked me these questions before. The way it was phrased implied that it was the same person (would have otherwise been "I had been asked these questions before")
pandaman 11y ago
To counter your anecdote here is mine: during the interview my plane back had been switched by Google from something like 6 pm to 11-12. The interview was over before 4 and it had been at Youtube (very close to the airport) so I got to spend more than 8 hours at the airport before my 12 hours multi-connected flight. Literally the worst experience I have ever had during an interview.
- at-fates-hands 11y ago
  something similar happened to my best friend when he interviewed there. They told him to take two days for the interview process. He goes through both days (16+ hours of grueling questions and whiteboard tests) and he's set to fly out at 6pm, the interview wraps up at 2pm. Recruiter comes up while they're exiting last interview and asks him if he can stay one more day, another department head wants to interview him for another position. He balked and caught his flight back on time, thinking whatever he just went through should be more than enough information for whoever wanted to take another full day to ask him questions. Never heard from them again. No follow-up, no email, no nothing. He figured the last question was a test, to gauge how bad he wanted to work there. He said it was a really shitty way to determine how driven someone is by wasting two days of their time, then rudely asking him to cancel his flight, call his employer, and make another boatload of arrangements on the spur of the moment. He did get subsequent recruiting emails and simply replied after his last experience, he wasn't interested.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

dijit 11y ago

My experience was not so stellar. Interviewer tagged me and I thought I'd go along with it for the fun. I'm a systems engineer not a developer so YMMV. First stage interviewer put me through a basic aptitude test ("what is netstat?", "what's the expected output of dig?") which was fine and I answered them all with a fair degree of correctness but the questions quickly went on to different programming languages, and while I've done some small things and I definitely know my way around a bourne shell I didn't get spectacular marks honestly, mostly because he was asking programming questions and I haven't had as much exposure to code as I'd like. the next week I receive what I thought was a follow up call, but it was another round of preliminary questions.. around 2 questions in, and I realise these are the same exact questions I answered the week before. I'm a bastion of honesty, and while I knew the answers to all his questions now (because curiousity made me look up the ones I had failed.) I felt I should tell him that he asked me these questions before. I did.. he fell silent.. "are you sure" "Yeah, your next question is about netstat" ".. oh.. well I don't have your results" "Do you have any other questions to ask, you can reask me questions but my success rate will be higher this time" "no, we'll contact you in 6 months" Well, he didn't, but that process shook me a bit.. I certainly wouldn't call it stellar, and I'm likely blacklisted from interviewing at google now as I don't think I've had recruiter spam from them in a long time.

x00gler123 11y ago
But how could this have been a more stellar experience for you? Should they have given you a consolidation price? Job interviews are a business transaction (after all you are there because you want their money). Not hiring you is fair game and once they have decided/committed to pass on the opportunity it wouldn't be rational to waste money by continuing a pointless discussion.
- mynameisvlad 11y ago
  I mean, not parent commenter, but I'd expect, y'know, the recruiter to actually remember giving the exact same preliminary interview to the same candidate a week earlier.
  - brianwawok 11y ago
    Was it the same interviewer? Maybe there are 10 interviewers going off the same script. Interviewer 1 called OP and asked questions. Then it was lunch time and he forgot to put result in the CMS. So the same guy popped up a week later to Interviewer 2. He was reading off the same script, so of course his questions are the same. Not his fault, or Google's per say - Interviewer 1 happened to forget a step. (Which is sad, but we all make mistakes!)
    - dijit 11y ago
      it was the same guy, we'd spoken before on Linkedin.
      - brianwawok 11y ago
        Hah then shame on him ;)
    - mynameisvlad 11y ago
      > I felt I should tell him that he asked me these questions before. The way it was phrased implied that it was the same person (would have otherwise been "I had been asked these questions before")

pandaman 11y ago

To counter your anecdote here is mine: during the interview my plane back had been switched by Google from something like 6 pm to 11-12. The interview was over before 4 and it had been at Youtube (very close to the airport) so I got to spend more than 8 hours at the airport before my 12 hours multi-connected flight. Literally the worst experience I have ever had during an interview.

at-fates-hands 11y ago
something similar happened to my best friend when he interviewed there. They told him to take two days for the interview process. He goes through both days (16+ hours of grueling questions and whiteboard tests) and he's set to fly out at 6pm, the interview wraps up at 2pm. Recruiter comes up while they're exiting last interview and asks him if he can stay one more day, another department head wants to interview him for another position. He balked and caught his flight back on time, thinking whatever he just went through should be more than enough information for whoever wanted to take another full day to ask him questions. Never heard from them again. No follow-up, no email, no nothing. He figured the last question was a test, to gauge how bad he wanted to work there. He said it was a really shitty way to determine how driven someone is by wasting two days of their time, then rudely asking him to cancel his flight, call his employer, and make another boatload of arrangements on the spur of the moment. He did get subsequent recruiting emails and simply replied after his last experience, he wasn't interested.