11 ms·

My 2 cents: I was contacted by a recruiter, unsolicited through a referral, and asked if I was interested in interviewing. At the time, I already had an offer f

by yid 15y ago

My 2 cents: I was contacted by a recruiter, unsolicited through a referral, and asked if I was interested in interviewing. At the time, I already had an offer from one of the other big companies, which I was upfront about. The recruiter said it was ok, and would set me up for the first round of interviews. After about a week of emails, I just simply stopped hearing from the recruiter. Not a single interview, no reason for terminating contact, just plain dead silence. I tried emailing her a few times and left her a voicemail, noting very politely that they had contacted me and not vice versa, and asking if they were still interested in setting up an interview, but all I got was stony silence. If that's not broken, I don't know what is. For a company that hires the best engineering talent, they either hire substandard HR people, or perhaps most HR people just operate at a different level of efficacy.

javert 15y ago
I had a deadline to give a yes/no to another company, and my recruiter at Google asked me to get my deadline extended so that Google would have time to interview me. I asked the other company for an extension, which I got, and told my Google recruiter the new deadline. Then Google never responded and I never did an interview with them. I felt really put-off by that.
- xster 15y ago
  Went through a dozen super generic interviews for a generic engineer role. Got a good feedback but ended up finding out that the role was filled before my case was presented to the hiring committee and that even though the interviews were generic, they try to use the results to fill one chosen position only. I needed to restart the entire process and do more generic interviews to try for another generic role in one particular opening.
- adnam 15y ago
  Why didn't you just say "yes". You can always change your mind.
  - yid 15y ago
    I think his point was that he acted in good faith -- with the expectation that Google would reciprocate -- and was essentially let down without courtesy. Even a simple "sorry, we're unable to interview you, our apologies for asking you to get an extension" would have gone a long way, even if just for the word-of-mouth reputation.
    - javert 15y ago
      Yep. Re: Google's word-of mouth reputation: On the one hand, I feel kind of stupid bitching about my experience with Google, even though it really did happen. I don't like bitching. On the other hand, as we hackers talk about this kind of issue at Google, maybe they'll eventually listen and shape up a bit if there really are systemic problems, and that's a win for everyone. I actually tried giving Google "suggestions," though I don't think it made an impact (which is to be expected and understandable).
      - Stormbringer 15y ago
        Why would you care? Essentially when you boil it down to eesentials (ie what pays for your paycheck) Google is an advertising company with a terrible track record on human rights and privacy.
      - Matt_Cutts 15y ago
        I think Google does listen and try to improve in response to feedback. Interviews and hiring can be especially hard, because of the number of resumes, phone screens, and interviews involved. For what it's worth, I think the interview and screening process has gotten better over the years, even if we have a ways to go. Sorry to hear about your experience though.
        white_devil 15y ago
        Once again, Google's Hacker-PR-Department springs into action to mitigate potential damage and to placate Hackers!
  - 15y ago
xster 15y ago
despite the very high tech and unique looking appearance of their hiring process, it's actually very typical. It's different rather by its scalability and the extend to which it is industrialised than by its cleverness to find people's creativity and potential. It's a very well oiled machine to weed out people with a bad grasp of the fundamentals en mass rather than a tuned process to find a few shock trooper geniuses it needs.
alnayyir 15y ago
I had the same experience. It's unlikely I'll take one of their HR people seriously ever again. A Google engineer or PM would have to speak with me directly for me to bother.
- yid 15y ago
  Good point, their HR department has lost all credibility with me too.
  - alnayyir 15y ago
    Also the "a googler mentioned you" thing doesn't count. I mean direct contact.
joebadmo 15y ago
All of these recruitment horror stories are starting to scare me about Google, but I wonder how much of it is selection bias. Anyone who has a good experience almost definitionally gets sucked into the G-Vortex and basically never gets heard from again, right? I have a friend who just accepted a position at Google, and she said the process was long and arduous, but it wasn't a horror story.
- yid 15y ago
  From my point of view, they or someone inside clearly thought I was "good", and I obviously passed the minimum clearance test from HR. Since I didn't even get a single technical interview, they could not have developed their opinion on my abilities further. I can therefore be possibly valuable to the company in the future, but as a result of this idiocy, am completely put off by them, especially since I've got offers from the other biggies. A better approach would be to vet me thoroughly before contacting me. In other words, only contact me if you're sure that you can at least put me through a single interview.
- Travis 15y ago
  A long and arduous process with a job at the end makes it a long fought battle that you were victorious in. Getting a rejection after that (and all the psychological baggage that comes with a company "rejecting you") makes it a bitter loss. Same process (just as broken), but the outcome is hugely influential. I think you're spot on, tho -- the squeaky wheel is the one that complains to internet forums.
- noctorne 15y ago
  Well, I know Googlers pretty well. Even internally, they say their hiring process really sucks. Not one person told me this, 80% of the people I talked to told me the same thing. I personally wont blame the interviewers or the recruiters, they are doing their job. I blame their messed up Hiring Committee. I don't understand why the hiring committee can't collaborate with the interviewers and hiring manager to hire a person. Everything is done through writing, and the hiring committee does everything quietly on their own. I even wonder, is the hiring committee a computer?
luu 15y ago
I don't think that's unique to Google. I've gotten the silent treatment multiple times at other large companies, after being accosted by a recruiter. At Intel, it even happened after I received a job offer. I was on a project that was in crunch mode, so I asked if I could start in three or four months (instead of three or four weeks, like they wanted). Apparently, that was such an egregious breach of etiquette on my part that the hiring manager (an engineer) stopped responding to phone calls or email. And it wasn't as if my start date came out of nowhere -- I mentioned the issue during my phone interview, during my onsite interview, and on the form they sent me where they wanted me to list my availability.
- xster 15y ago
  unfortunately externalising costs and risks are just fundamentally part of corporations by incentive than the choice of some hiring managers
noctorne 15y ago
Same thing happened to me. I contribute to many projects, I even spent my time for some Google projects. A lot of time actually. I had an offer with another great company, and they told me to let them extend it for another week. I did the interview process at Google, and did two phone interviews and one onsite. I thought I did pretty well, but I was waiting for their reply back for a week, and no reply. Then I pinged them, they apologized and said they are waiting for references. I pinged them again for another week, no reply yet. Then I accepted the other job because Google's Hiring process sucks so much, that it tells you right there that they don't care about their employees. I spent time out of my own work life to do interviews, and they can't bother to email us in the recommended timeframe. They said within 4 days, but 14 days ... Working for a company like that would seem disastrous.
- bugsy 15y ago
  There's a consistency in these stories from different people over the years that tells me this is one of the normal processes at Google. It may not be intentional, but it is known and there is no sincere desire to fix the process. That that is so tells me the process is about asserting power and place, and not about looking for talent.
  - gaius 15y ago
    Well, why would they? Even today, they still have a reputation as the dream place to work (even tho' with what, 20,000 engineers now, they are more like HP or IBM than they are a startup). They have zero need to change until their deluge of candidates starts to dry up.
    - danbmil99 15y ago
      The original article makes a good case about why they need to change. They have had some serious misses lately, and some of that may be attributed to a broken hiring process that emphasizes coding ability above all other considerations.
ballgoogler 15y ago
You know who complains about Google's hiring process... people that don't get hired by Google. I've never heard anybody who WAS hired by Google complain about anything. Maybe you all just weren't good enough. That's OK, not everybody is the creme-a-la-creme. Look at Google's market cap and Android and Chrome's growth (not to mention their dominance in search and advertising)... Google doesn't need you, and that's why they didn't hire you. You can cry a river about how Google is "failing" because they didn't hire you... but I think their shareholders (who Google makes very rich) would laugh right in your face and be glad that they didn't hire a whiner like you.
- mrgordon 15y ago
  Google cannot find people to hire fast enough even by its own admission. I have personally never applied to work at Google but I can understand why someone who never anything heard back from a company with over 20,000 people would be a little pissed.
  - ballgoogler 15y ago
    If they have over 20,000 employees and "they cannot find people to hire fast enough"... then perhaps they should impose even stricter hiring standards so they they don't end up with 10's of thousands of employees who are of such low value that they need to keep hiring more. Google's main problems are not in hiring more people... it is in putting the (extremely high calibre) employees that they already have to work on concise and appropriate projects that will advance the future of the company in the right direction. Google needs to focus on its management decisions and project creation / execution strategy much more heavily that it needs to focus on the hurt feelings of coders who didn't have what it takes to get in the door.
    - akronim 15y ago
      Google's main problems are not in hiring more people There's also some incentive for them to get good people before the competition does. It's not like they can't afford the salaries.
- 15y ago
totalforge 15y ago
The recruiters are usually contractors, and they have a lot of turnover. Not that you should have gotten silence, but it's possible that's why.
- jacques_chester 15y ago
  That doesn't excuse them. These days we have databases. There's no reason that an entry can't be made for each applicant which is handed off to other recruiters when one leaves. That the process seems so tied to individuals is surprising to me.
Tangaroa 15y ago
A similar thing happened to me. A Google HR staffer sent me an unsolicited offer for a job at YouTube. I accepted, and... A week later I sent an email asking "how long is the usual turn-around time on this?" Google's HR person said she would let me know by the end of the day, and that was that last I ever heard from her. All further communications were black-holed. I suppose I was unusually lucky to get that last message.

by yid 15y ago

javert 15y ago

I had a deadline to give a yes/no to another company, and my recruiter at Google asked me to get my deadline extended so that Google would have time to interview me. I asked the other company for an extension, which I got, and told my Google recruiter the new deadline. Then Google never responded and I never did an interview with them. I felt really put-off by that.

xster 15y ago
Went through a dozen super generic interviews for a generic engineer role. Got a good feedback but ended up finding out that the role was filled before my case was presented to the hiring committee and that even though the interviews were generic, they try to use the results to fill one chosen position only. I needed to restart the entire process and do more generic interviews to try for another generic role in one particular opening.
adnam 15y ago
Why didn't you just say "yes". You can always change your mind.
- yid 15y ago
  I think his point was that he acted in good faith -- with the expectation that Google would reciprocate -- and was essentially let down without courtesy. Even a simple "sorry, we're unable to interview you, our apologies for asking you to get an extension" would have gone a long way, even if just for the word-of-mouth reputation.
  - javert 15y ago
    Yep. Re: Google's word-of mouth reputation: On the one hand, I feel kind of stupid bitching about my experience with Google, even though it really did happen. I don't like bitching. On the other hand, as we hackers talk about this kind of issue at Google, maybe they'll eventually listen and shape up a bit if there really are systemic problems, and that's a win for everyone. I actually tried giving Google "suggestions," though I don't think it made an impact (which is to be expected and understandable).
    - Stormbringer 15y ago
      Why would you care? Essentially when you boil it down to eesentials (ie what pays for your paycheck) Google is an advertising company with a terrible track record on human rights and privacy.
    - Matt_Cutts 15y ago
      I think Google does listen and try to improve in response to feedback. Interviews and hiring can be especially hard, because of the number of resumes, phone screens, and interviews involved. For what it's worth, I think the interview and screening process has gotten better over the years, even if we have a ways to go. Sorry to hear about your experience though.
      - white_devil 15y ago
        Once again, Google's Hacker-PR-Department springs into action to mitigate potential damage and to placate Hackers!
- 15y ago

xster 15y ago

despite the very high tech and unique looking appearance of their hiring process, it's actually very typical. It's different rather by its scalability and the extend to which it is industrialised than by its cleverness to find people's creativity and potential. It's a very well oiled machine to weed out people with a bad grasp of the fundamentals en mass rather than a tuned process to find a few shock trooper geniuses it needs.

alnayyir 15y ago

I had the same experience. It's unlikely I'll take one of their HR people seriously ever again. A Google engineer or PM would have to speak with me directly for me to bother.

yid 15y ago
Good point, their HR department has lost all credibility with me too.
- alnayyir 15y ago
  Also the "a googler mentioned you" thing doesn't count. I mean direct contact.

joebadmo 15y ago

All of these recruitment horror stories are starting to scare me about Google, but I wonder how much of it is selection bias. Anyone who has a good experience almost definitionally gets sucked into the G-Vortex and basically never gets heard from again, right? I have a friend who just accepted a position at Google, and she said the process was long and arduous, but it wasn't a horror story.

yid 15y ago
From my point of view, they or someone inside clearly thought I was "good", and I obviously passed the minimum clearance test from HR. Since I didn't even get a single technical interview, they could not have developed their opinion on my abilities further. I can therefore be possibly valuable to the company in the future, but as a result of this idiocy, am completely put off by them, especially since I've got offers from the other biggies. A better approach would be to vet me thoroughly before contacting me. In other words, only contact me if you're sure that you can at least put me through a single interview.
Travis 15y ago
A long and arduous process with a job at the end makes it a long fought battle that you were victorious in. Getting a rejection after that (and all the psychological baggage that comes with a company "rejecting you") makes it a bitter loss. Same process (just as broken), but the outcome is hugely influential. I think you're spot on, tho -- the squeaky wheel is the one that complains to internet forums.
noctorne 15y ago
Well, I know Googlers pretty well. Even internally, they say their hiring process really sucks. Not one person told me this, 80% of the people I talked to told me the same thing. I personally wont blame the interviewers or the recruiters, they are doing their job. I blame their messed up Hiring Committee. I don't understand why the hiring committee can't collaborate with the interviewers and hiring manager to hire a person. Everything is done through writing, and the hiring committee does everything quietly on their own. I even wonder, is the hiring committee a computer?

luu 15y ago

I don't think that's unique to Google. I've gotten the silent treatment multiple times at other large companies, after being accosted by a recruiter. At Intel, it even happened after I received a job offer. I was on a project that was in crunch mode, so I asked if I could start in three or four months (instead of three or four weeks, like they wanted). Apparently, that was such an egregious breach of etiquette on my part that the hiring manager (an engineer) stopped responding to phone calls or email. And it wasn't as if my start date came out of nowhere -- I mentioned the issue during my phone interview, during my onsite interview, and on the form they sent me where they wanted me to list my availability.

xster 15y ago
unfortunately externalising costs and risks are just fundamentally part of corporations by incentive than the choice of some hiring managers

noctorne 15y ago

Same thing happened to me. I contribute to many projects, I even spent my time for some Google projects. A lot of time actually. I had an offer with another great company, and they told me to let them extend it for another week. I did the interview process at Google, and did two phone interviews and one onsite. I thought I did pretty well, but I was waiting for their reply back for a week, and no reply. Then I pinged them, they apologized and said they are waiting for references. I pinged them again for another week, no reply yet. Then I accepted the other job because Google's Hiring process sucks so much, that it tells you right there that they don't care about their employees. I spent time out of my own work life to do interviews, and they can't bother to email us in the recommended timeframe. They said within 4 days, but 14 days ... Working for a company like that would seem disastrous.

bugsy 15y ago
There's a consistency in these stories from different people over the years that tells me this is one of the normal processes at Google. It may not be intentional, but it is known and there is no sincere desire to fix the process. That that is so tells me the process is about asserting power and place, and not about looking for talent.
- gaius 15y ago
  Well, why would they? Even today, they still have a reputation as the dream place to work (even tho' with what, 20,000 engineers now, they are more like HP or IBM than they are a startup). They have zero need to change until their deluge of candidates starts to dry up.
  - danbmil99 15y ago
    The original article makes a good case about why they need to change. They have had some serious misses lately, and some of that may be attributed to a broken hiring process that emphasizes coding ability above all other considerations.

ballgoogler 15y ago

You know who complains about Google's hiring process... people that don't get hired by Google. I've never heard anybody who WAS hired by Google complain about anything. Maybe you all just weren't good enough. That's OK, not everybody is the creme-a-la-creme. Look at Google's market cap and Android and Chrome's growth (not to mention their dominance in search and advertising)... Google doesn't need you, and that's why they didn't hire you. You can cry a river about how Google is "failing" because they didn't hire you... but I think their shareholders (who Google makes very rich) would laugh right in your face and be glad that they didn't hire a whiner like you.

mrgordon 15y ago
Google cannot find people to hire fast enough even by its own admission. I have personally never applied to work at Google but I can understand why someone who never anything heard back from a company with over 20,000 people would be a little pissed.
- ballgoogler 15y ago
  If they have over 20,000 employees and "they cannot find people to hire fast enough"... then perhaps they should impose even stricter hiring standards so they they don't end up with 10's of thousands of employees who are of such low value that they need to keep hiring more. Google's main problems are not in hiring more people... it is in putting the (extremely high calibre) employees that they already have to work on concise and appropriate projects that will advance the future of the company in the right direction. Google needs to focus on its management decisions and project creation / execution strategy much more heavily that it needs to focus on the hurt feelings of coders who didn't have what it takes to get in the door.
  - akronim 15y ago
    Google's main problems are not in hiring more people There's also some incentive for them to get good people before the competition does. It's not like they can't afford the salaries.
15y ago

totalforge 15y ago

The recruiters are usually contractors, and they have a lot of turnover. Not that you should have gotten silence, but it's possible that's why.

jacques_chester 15y ago
That doesn't excuse them. These days we have databases. There's no reason that an entry can't be made for each applicant which is handed off to other recruiters when one leaves. That the process seems so tied to individuals is surprising to me.

Tangaroa 15y ago

A similar thing happened to me. A Google HR staffer sent me an unsolicited offer for a job at YouTube. I accepted, and... A week later I sent an email asking "how long is the usual turn-around time on this?" Google's HR person said she would let me know by the end of the day, and that was that last I ever heard from her. All further communications were black-holed. I suppose I was unusually lucky to get that last message.