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Defining Google
pbaumgar writes "Did anyone catch the 60 Minutes piece on Google this evening? They mention their hiring process a bit in the story: 'For example, Google is hiring about 25 new people every week, and receives more than 1,000 resumes a day. But they're determined to stick to their rigorous screening process. Google uses aptitude tests, which it has even placed in technical magazines, hoping some really big brains would tackle the hardest problems. Score well on the test, and you might get a job interview. And then another and another. One recent hire had 14 interviews before getting the job - and that was in the public relations department.' As a person who recently interviewed with them this past summer (I didn't get the job), I was wondering what others' experiences were like who interview with Google. I had 4 interviews, and it was by far the longest and most interesting interviewing process I've been involved in. I'd love to hear others' experiences in their attempt to get hired."
I had *10 hours* of interviews for a company that didn't end up hiring *ANYONE*, for a shity 50k a year entry position (yes, 50k a year is shitty in the area it was in when an apartment costs 1500/m).
A friend of mine got hired for a company who wanted an expert in *3* non-related research fields (he has a PHD and luckily and experience in those fields). He flew up there and did several *days* of interviews, Then they called him back and said he would also have to be an expert in Unix and could he fly back up to meet their Unix team.
We were able to maniupulate the test conditions and make him appear to be a unix expert. Hes been employed for a couple months now, and has worked entirely as a unix admin, which isnt even what hes hired for.
The job market is nothing less then crazy
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
I got a call from Google earlier this fall, saying they'd farmed my resume off the web and wanted to interview me for some kind of Unix-related position. I spoke on the phone a couple times with an HR person who asked me some general questions and setup a phone interview with a current Google employee.
The phone interview with the employee, who was working at a position very similar to the one I was interviewing for, was rigorous. He asked questions that required me to speak code to him, on the fly. I ended up asking if I could take my time and write the code out before I read it to him, because I didn't want to screw up. I screwed up anyway. I was really nervous and even though the questions weren't very complex, they were things that I wasn't prepared to have to answer on the spot.
I finally heard back from them almost a month later, with the (no surprise) rejection.
Intercarve Networks, LLC
I flew out to Google in May for an interview. I had first interviewed on campus (I actually thought I bombed that interview). They flew me out to California for an interview (the only person from my school that interviewed for that position). I was interviewing for an Associate Product Marketing Manager position. My day consisted of about six half-hour interviews, all in the same small conference room, with a break for lunch. The process was very different in comparison to Microsoft (I had just flown out to Microsoft two weeks earlier). While Microsoft moves you from building to building, room to room, so you get sufficiently lost and disoriented (while the different interviewers talk about you behind your back) at Google the interviewers come to you and they don't know anything about you until you meet them (so they claim). Google's questions seemed significantly easier than Microsoft's, but I was interviewing for a Program Manager position at Microsoft, so the focus of the questions was pretty different. Microsoft gives you brain teasers, tells you to write code on the board (even though it was a non-coding position), and even gave me an ethics question. Google gave me a lot of estimation questions (number of pizzas sold at college in a year), which I don't really understand since I don't see how being a good estimator makes you good at anything else. Regardless, I was really proud of all of my estimations (I prepared myself with a bunch of dumb facts, like the number of Wal-Mart stores in the US, to use as references, which worked well. At the end of my day of interviews (which I thought went really well) I was talking with an HR guy (not my HR guy, strangely) and he asked me what time I was coming back the next day. I told him that I wasn't coming back since my flight home was the next morning (this was set up by the Google travel people, I had no choice in this matter). He told me that I needed to meet with two more people and he went back upstairs to see if they were free to meet with me that afternoon. It took him a long time to come back and tell me that they were too busy, so I was sent home, pretty much knowing that I wouldn't be getting a job since I couldn't complete the interview process. I was an east-coaster, and unlike all the Stanford kids that they seemed to move in by the busload for interviews, I had to go home. It took them a long time to get back to me about their decision. The HR guy kept telling me that the meeting to discuss my interviews kept getting postponed. Then one day he told me that I needed to set aside two hours for a timed essay. I took the essay, which was the "final step" in the interview process, according to the Word doc they sent me (I was expecting some high-tech web form that prevents me from missing the deadline, but instead I just got the email at the time specified and had to email it back within two hours). I got an email about a week later telling me I didn't get the job. My essay kicked ass. I should post it online. Oh well. I've got a lot of other observations about the differences between the Google and Microsoft interview processes if anyone cares.
So I'm a programmer at Amazon.com - I do a good bit of recruiting/interviewing.
Google/Amazon/Microsoft all do it pretty much the same way, with a few variations. Everybody's looking for the same super-awesome programmers, and so you have basically a gauntlet of programmer-led technical interviews. Google's aptitude tests, advertisements are just it's way of leting the super-awesome programmers know that Google Wants You!
The main difference between places is how exactly they define "super-awesome". Here's my take on the companies I know about:
1. Google will hire really hardcore theroetical people into pretty applied positions. Raw intelligence seems to be job #1 at google, so they hire people without a solid pratical track record.
2. Amazon will hire hardcore hackers, even if they don't have perfect academic credentials. Stuff like sucess in Open Source project is way up there at Amazon.
3. Microsoft will hire people who have decent (but not awesome) coding skills and social skills and give them a Project Manager job. Because they have so many Project Managers, I think that also frees them to hire programmers with even fewer social skills.[pmjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjn