5 ms·

When I interviewed at Google I was able to bypass the screening and hear back three days after the onsite. Everything from initial phone call to final decision

When I interviewed at Google I was able to bypass the screening and hear back three days after the onsite. Everything from initial phone call to final decision took three weeks. These were the steps I took. 1) Apply through internal referral. Ask multiple people to refer you. 2) Ask your friends to check up on the application process. Make sure they tell the recruiters you are further along with with Facebook, Twitter, or some other competitor. 3) When the recruiter contacts you. Thank them, tell them how much you want to work at Google, and then mention your tight deadline due to offers from other companies. And I had a wonderful experience at Google because of two interviewers in particular. 1) I failed both questions from an interviewer. They were easy questions and I managed to crash and burn spectacularly. I don't understand how my interviewer managed to remain friendly and treated me with respect the whole time. 2) On the last round, I did well enough to score a 3/4. Yet during our chat, we talked about my other options and concluded that I should go join Redfin because developers can make a bigger impact at a smaller company. I appreciated his honesty.

oconnore 12y ago
You can generalize this: Tips to outmaneuver any bureaucracy: know/bribe people on the inside to help you.
- ToastyMallows 12y ago
  I understand this is a meta comment, but why is everyone (including the blogger) using the word bureaucracy? When did Google turn into a government?
  - markbnj 12y ago
    Governments are not the only bureaucracies. Any company as large and powerful as Google has to have acquired at least the trappings of one.
  - humanrebar 12y ago
    "In modern parlance, bureaucracy refers to the administrative system governing any large institution." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy
    - ToastyMallows 12y ago
      Fair enough, it just felt weird in this context.
  - dugmartin 12y ago
    The second definition of bureaucracy at Websters is "a system of government or business that has many complicated rules and ways of doing things" which I think applies to this article. I think a better definition would be "a system that is more concerned with how it runs rather than the results it generates".
  - krapp 12y ago
    I suppose any company of sufficient size and influence can be considered a form of government, albeit one which elects its citizens, rather than the other way around.
jessedhillon 12y ago
I don't understand how my interviewer managed to remain friendly and treated me with respect the whole time. I hope I never interview with you then!
- kelukelugames 12y ago
  I had plenty of interviewers end my interview half an hour early because they thought I was dumb. "I want to give you some time to ask questions about {insert company name}." I don't have excellent social skills but I can spot that line from a mile away. Reading this reddit thread also lowered my expectation of the average google interviewer. http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1z97rx/from_a_googler_the_google_interview_process/ http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1z97rx/fr... While at Google, only one person cut my interview short. I thought it was weird because I had answered her question correctly. But apparently they often write off a candidate for not using the right terminology or some other picky constraint.
  - x0x0 12y ago
    Hmm -- when I interview candidates, I always ask that question and am very happy to answer any question they want about the company. In fact, I give out my personal email address and offer to answer any questions they have as honestly as I can. It's no good for either side to have buyer's remorse, and if I can help a candidate make a good decision, even if that decision isn't to work for me/us, it saves me time in the end.
  - bcoates 12y ago
    Remember that not everybody does a tech-quiz heavy interview. When I interview people I tend to end the programming questions part about halfway through regardless of how well they do.
  - DannyBee 12y ago
    (Gonna try to do the best I can here using only info that's been made public before) "While at Google, only one person cut my interview short. I thought it was weird because I had answered her question correctly. But apparently they often write off a candidate for not using the right terminology or some other picky constraint." I see the other side of the interviews (i sit on a large number of Google hiring committees, and have for about 7 years), and I certainly don't see this happen often. Mostly among newer interviewers. HC gives feedback when we see it, and that puts a stop to it. We either ignore or adjust our thoughts on the interview score to account for it. Without knowing your exact case, i'll point out there is rarely a "correct" answer to the interview question. It's usually more about thought process and whether you can reason about how to improve upon solutions, etc. Hiring committees hate interview questions that rely on tricks or whatever in order to get good solution, and usually either ban the questions or at the very least, ask interviewers to change questions (and again, adjust our thinking to ignore or whatever the interview score)[1] Hiring Committees certainly try to make sense of interviews, and we are, after all, people. It's not like we look at interview scores, go "welp, they are 0.1 points below the average hiring score, so that's a no". We are also very good about spotting inconsistencies between interviews, etc. I'm not going to claim it's perfect, but it's definitely not what reddit claims, where "They look at it for 3-5 minutes and decide whether you are hired or not. In exceptional cases, they decided that they don’t have enough information, and ask you to do more interviews. " I spend a large number of hours a week at night reading candidate interview packets, writing up what i thought of each interview and how it affected my thoughts on hiring the candidate, etc. I then spend an hour in each committee discussing candidates. It may be that in committee, it takes 3-5 minutes to make a decision, but that is because committees tend to end up with very consistent decisions between members (and we don't see each others initial decision or reasoning until the meeting starts). If the decision from everyone was "no, we shouldn't hire", or "yes, we should hire", then there is nothing really to discuss. If there is dissent one way or the other, long discussions over candidates often break out, and we keep going till we come to a consensus about hiring or not hiring. Usually we don't need to ask for more interviews, there are rare cases where we just don't have enough signal in the interviews. [1] I believe it was Rob Pike who said that it is very easy to come up with questions where if the person does badly, you don't want to hire them, but very hard to come up with questions where if they do well, you do want to hire them. Questions that have "tricks" in them basically never fall into the latter category.
EricaJoy 12y ago
>On the last round, I did well enough to score a 3/4. Is this your own assessment, or did the interviewer tell you your score?

oconnore 12y ago

You can generalize this: Tips to outmaneuver any bureaucracy: know/bribe people on the inside to help you.

ToastyMallows 12y ago
I understand this is a meta comment, but why is everyone (including the blogger) using the word bureaucracy? When did Google turn into a government?
- markbnj 12y ago
  Governments are not the only bureaucracies. Any company as large and powerful as Google has to have acquired at least the trappings of one.
- humanrebar 12y ago
  "In modern parlance, bureaucracy refers to the administrative system governing any large institution." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy
  - ToastyMallows 12y ago
    Fair enough, it just felt weird in this context.
- dugmartin 12y ago
  The second definition of bureaucracy at Websters is "a system of government or business that has many complicated rules and ways of doing things" which I think applies to this article. I think a better definition would be "a system that is more concerned with how it runs rather than the results it generates".
- krapp 12y ago
  I suppose any company of sufficient size and influence can be considered a form of government, albeit one which elects its citizens, rather than the other way around.

jessedhillon 12y ago

I don't understand how my interviewer managed to remain friendly and treated me with respect the whole time. I hope I never interview with you then!

kelukelugames 12y ago
I had plenty of interviewers end my interview half an hour early because they thought I was dumb. "I want to give you some time to ask questions about {insert company name}." I don't have excellent social skills but I can spot that line from a mile away. Reading this reddit thread also lowered my expectation of the average google interviewer. http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1z97rx/from_a_googler_the_google_interview_process/ http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1z97rx/fr... While at Google, only one person cut my interview short. I thought it was weird because I had answered her question correctly. But apparently they often write off a candidate for not using the right terminology or some other picky constraint.
- x0x0 12y ago
  Hmm -- when I interview candidates, I always ask that question and am very happy to answer any question they want about the company. In fact, I give out my personal email address and offer to answer any questions they have as honestly as I can. It's no good for either side to have buyer's remorse, and if I can help a candidate make a good decision, even if that decision isn't to work for me/us, it saves me time in the end.
- bcoates 12y ago
  Remember that not everybody does a tech-quiz heavy interview. When I interview people I tend to end the programming questions part about halfway through regardless of how well they do.
- DannyBee 12y ago
  (Gonna try to do the best I can here using only info that's been made public before) "While at Google, only one person cut my interview short. I thought it was weird because I had answered her question correctly. But apparently they often write off a candidate for not using the right terminology or some other picky constraint." I see the other side of the interviews (i sit on a large number of Google hiring committees, and have for about 7 years), and I certainly don't see this happen often. Mostly among newer interviewers. HC gives feedback when we see it, and that puts a stop to it. We either ignore or adjust our thoughts on the interview score to account for it. Without knowing your exact case, i'll point out there is rarely a "correct" answer to the interview question. It's usually more about thought process and whether you can reason about how to improve upon solutions, etc. Hiring committees hate interview questions that rely on tricks or whatever in order to get good solution, and usually either ban the questions or at the very least, ask interviewers to change questions (and again, adjust our thinking to ignore or whatever the interview score)[1] Hiring Committees certainly try to make sense of interviews, and we are, after all, people. It's not like we look at interview scores, go "welp, they are 0.1 points below the average hiring score, so that's a no". We are also very good about spotting inconsistencies between interviews, etc. I'm not going to claim it's perfect, but it's definitely not what reddit claims, where "They look at it for 3-5 minutes and decide whether you are hired or not. In exceptional cases, they decided that they don’t have enough information, and ask you to do more interviews. " I spend a large number of hours a week at night reading candidate interview packets, writing up what i thought of each interview and how it affected my thoughts on hiring the candidate, etc. I then spend an hour in each committee discussing candidates. It may be that in committee, it takes 3-5 minutes to make a decision, but that is because committees tend to end up with very consistent decisions between members (and we don't see each others initial decision or reasoning until the meeting starts). If the decision from everyone was "no, we shouldn't hire", or "yes, we should hire", then there is nothing really to discuss. If there is dissent one way or the other, long discussions over candidates often break out, and we keep going till we come to a consensus about hiring or not hiring. Usually we don't need to ask for more interviews, there are rare cases where we just don't have enough signal in the interviews. [1] I believe it was Rob Pike who said that it is very easy to come up with questions where if the person does badly, you don't want to hire them, but very hard to come up with questions where if they do well, you do want to hire them. Questions that have "tricks" in them basically never fall into the latter category.

EricaJoy 12y ago

>On the last round, I did well enough to score a 3/4. Is this your own assessment, or did the interviewer tell you your score?