Google Adjusts Hiring Processes

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Google is attempting to fine tune its hiring process as it ramps up recruiting to keep pace with its success, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'In Google's early years, [Sergey] Brin or co-founder Larry Page interviewed nearly all job candidates before they were officially hired. A former Google executive recounts how, on occasion, Mr. Brin would show up for candidates' job interviews in unconventional dress, from roller blades to a cow costume complete with rubber udders around Halloween. Even today, at least one of the co-founders reviews every job offer recommended by an internal hiring committee on a weekly basis, sometimes pushing back with questions about an individual's qualifications.' While the interview process can remain 'glacial,' Google's new head of human resources notes that the average number of in-person interviews for each candidate offered a job has declined to 5.1 from 6.2. The company continues to seek overqualified employees who can be promoted quickly."

Comments

They hold nothing on Adm. Rickover

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a good summary of his technique:

Rickover's technique for interviewing prospective commanding officers was brutal. Along with the expected detailed examination of your qualifications he had you sit in a chair that had the front legs sawed off just enough to make you slide forward and remain very uncomfortable during the interview. On one occasion he had one of his young secretaries take off her shoes, stand in front of a line of prospective commanding officers and sing "My hero" to them while she stood there in her bare feet. He felt this exercise would humble them a little. I'm sure it did, but did they really need humbling? President Jimmy Carter once wrote about his interview with Rickover when he was still a young junior officer. Rickover asked him about his class standing when he graduated from the Naval Academy. Carter told the Admiral that he had graduated fifty ninth out of one hundred and twenty graduates in 1946. Rickover then asked him why he had not graduated number one. Carter thought about it for a little while and replied that he supposed he had just not tried hard enough.

Rickover asked. "Why not?"

Carter was speechless.

Rickover also interviewed every nuclear officer that would operate a nuclear reactor. There were many legends in the Navy nuclear community of junior officers being locked in broom closets and other types of harrassment. The Google founders can only blush with envy over what Rickover got away with.

Re:They hold nothing on Adm. Rickover

[Anonymous Coward]

I was not an officer, just an enlisted Nuke, so I never interviewed with Rickover. But the first place they toss a JO on a sub is back in maneuvering with the nukes since we could pretty much run ourselves, so I have heard these stories before. All I wanted to add to the discussion was that it was overt policy for the Navy to do pretty much everything it could to make you crack before they put you out in a real boat with a real reactor. Like it or not, I imagine Rickover's antics were guided by that principle rather than frat-boyish egomania.

But if you want to hear "whacky".... he drank a glass of primary coolant in front of Congress to make a point about nuclear power not being as dangerous as the uninformed might think.

Innnnteresting...

[tygerstripes]

The company continues to seek overqualified employees who can be promoted quickly.

This is almost exactly the opposite to what I've seen & experienced in almost every other place - especially the public sector. This is the sign of a company that expects to succeed and grow, as they want employees with a similar attitude. In the public sector or stagnant businesses, the opposite is true. If you're over-qualified, they don't want you as you won't be satisfied just doing the job for which you're hired.

I worked in HR for a while, and the boss there - someone I regard highly - had a saying: "Problems aren't encountered, they're recruited". By that token, the converse is also true. If you actively seek people who expect to do better things (not just want to), they probably will, and so will your company.

Word to the wise.

Yup, it's TOUGH.

[Noryungi]

Three of us, in a small company, interviewed for different jobs at Google. My boss shot for a system manager job, a co-worker tried to get in as a systems engineer and I tried a lowly tech position (hey, I was deliberately aiming low).

The results? Zero persons hired. And we are all card-carrying, Linux-using, OpenBSD-loving, certified nerds. Heck, just check my Journal if you don't believe me (Last entry: "How to compile gcc-4.1.1 on Solaris 8").

• My co-worker went through two (2) phone interviews before being dumped by Google.
• I went through four (4) phone interviews (about 45 minutes to one hour each) -- without too many problems, I might add -- before finding a true system administrator job and saying 'no' to Google. All of my interviews went great, but I figured the aggravation and time lost were not worth it. Besides, it was quite obvious that the whole process was going to last a loooong time, and I have a family to feed (meaning: I could not afford to wait for Google to decide).
• My boss went through something like 8+ phone interviews, plus one day-long in-person interview in one of Google's European Office. That day-long (from 9:00am to 4:00pm) interview included one interview by video-phone with a manager in the USA. Said my boss after the whole day: "Most difficult thing I have ever done in my life". Then he was dumped by Google.

(All the names have been changed to protect the guilty, of course) :-)

The moral of the story: it's tough kids. It's even worse than that. It's double-extra tough, with a heaping plate of steaming geekiness on the side. Is it worth it? Hey, don't ask me, I don't know. What I know is that we all now have great jobs, that are well paid, and did not take all this insanity to get. But these jobs are not 'cool' Google jobs, of course. YMMV.

Ask me again in a couple of years, when I try to get another job at the Googleplex...

Re:Yup, it's TOUGH.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to post this anonymously because of the two NDAs I've signed.

My experience was the exact opposite. Google saw my blog, phoned me, and asked if I'd be interested in working for them. They did two phone interviews which were utterly trivial, just chatting about programming. They flew me out to California, and the five in-person interview were almost equally trivial. One of them was "forget this, want to get lunch?". The result was unanimous in my favour, and I was hired with six figures a week later. I got the impression that they had already made up their minds, and were just going through the motions of the interview.

The process really unnerved me. I'm a good programmer, but frankly I'm not THAT good. Heck, I don't even have a university degree.

Re:Yup, it's TOUGH.

[stephend]

I interviewed for a technical consultant role here in the UK. I got through two phone interviews before being rejected. My second interviewer had, apparently, had fourteen interviews before being hired. That's just an absurd number. How much holiday and sick leave can you take at short notice without arousing suspicion?! (They were both long enough or required Internet access that I couldn't do them at work.)

By the end of the second I was in two minds whether to take things any further anyway. I wanted to work for Google, but could I go through fourteen interviews? I was concerned about the money, as no number was on the job spec and big names often offer low and offer options to compensate. I can't pay my mortgage with stock options!

And, most significantly, was the style of interview. They asked brain-teasers, which I tend to think is a lousy way to scope out a candidate. Either you know the trick and can do it instantly, you get lucky or you need a hint. None of these really shows how smart you are, how well you can program a computer, interact with clients or, indeed, any other aspect of the job. The interviewer was also clearly working in the background while I was trying to answer the questions, only half listening, which was just plain rude.

Most communications were friendly and personal, right up to the last. The rejection email started, impersonally, "dear candidate."

So overall I'm not terribly impressed with Google recruitment. Okay, maybe I'm biased against them as they turned me down but as an interviewer I've always considered part of my job as leaving a positive impression of the company even with candidates that are not going to be hired. Google failed in this.

Re:Study hard at school kids

[Anonymous Coward]

> who couldn't afford anything more than Bumfsck Community College

They're doing worse than discriminating against those without wealthy parents that can afford the expensive out of state top schools. They're interviewing people with degrees from lesser schools with no intent on hiring them. My undergrad degree is in electrical engineering and my masters is in computer engineering both from Clemson. At the time, Clemson was less than $500/semester which was all I could possibly afford. When I interviewed with Google I got the impression that they had zero intent on hiring me no matter what happened. I was asked several times why I didn't go to a "better" school. For the job they contacted me about I wrote the top textbook on the subject, currently used at Stanford, Univ of Colorado, and GA Tech among others, so I thought I would have been treated more respectfully. They called me. I wasted over $3k in expenses out of pocket to interview with them. And no I didn't get to meet Larry Page.

Officially they said I didn't have the experience they needed. That's a load of crap. I did distributed systems over the Internet for over a decade before Google was even started. I founded the first commercial ISP in this state. I was CTO of three Internet start-ups between 1994 and 2003. All three are still in business. They're not doing great and I didn't make much money but they have survived which is more than you can say about most Internet start-ups.

They hired someone that wasn't qualified and has no experience but had a degree from Stanford. After that bad experience I sold all of my Google stock. I don't think a company can survive long-term making those type of brain-dead decisions. Thank you Google for wasting my time.

Well, they certainly need to change something...

[Anonymous Coward]

I applied for a Software Engineering position at Google in Sydney being an Australian Resident a while ago. While I wasn't successful (it was a long shot, so I wasn't too concerned), I was utterly amazed at how incompetent their HR department at Mountain View was.

The story is as below:

1) So I get the 'thank you for your interest we really want to talk to you blah blah' email from one of the people in HR, requesting a phone interview from the US to my mobile (note: I live in AU), so I give them my full, prefixed international mobile number: +614XXXXXXXX, and we arrange a time. I was to be interviewed by their head honcho of Open Source Chris DiBona.

So, I wait patiently for a call a few days later, the phone never rings.

Turns our they couldn't get the number right, or at least, didn't know how to call an Australian international mobile number.

They said they left messages on my phone, but I don't have voicemail on, the mobile phone isn't an answering machine, and it's on and in full coverage all the time...

I only find this out later that day when I emailed them requesting what happened...

2) So, we re-organised the interview (over email with their HR people), again with Chris DiBona.

There's a mess up again, and nobody calls. Again, I waited patiently with the phone, awaiting for the call, nothing happened.

3) So, we reschedule the interview AGAIN (this time, not with Chris, but another person high up the chain who will remain unnamed). They forget to call.

4) So, it's a week and a bit later, as due to the time difference, the turn-around on sorting out these stuffups takes about 2.5 days each time.

I re-schedule again, but I don't pause my life for it anymore (decided to go to work anyway). Guess what, he forgets to call, and the HR girl who tries to contact me, forgot to press the '+' in '+61' to call my international phone number, so she couldn't get to me.

5) It's almost two weeks later now, and we re-schedule again, with a lady. I finally get a call in the morning.

40 minutes of questions on B+ trees and Index tables, and I'm done.

6) I get an email a week after that saying 'thank you for your interest blah blah, but you don't fit the profile for' - This being for a different job to that of what I actually applied for. :-)

So, understandably, by the end of this all, I really didn't give a shit if I didn't get the job, well, at least the job I applied for.

My skill set is great, my academic record 'alright', but to be honest, if a company can't pull its shit together like that, then I'm really not that interested in working for them, regardless of the inherit 'coolness' factor.

In any case, I'm doing better now that I envisage I would be if I were simply a Software Engineer at Google in any case, but that's how things in life pan out don't they ;-)

Google needs to grow up

[cperciva]

In the mid-1990s, Microsoft had a problem: They just weren't cool enough any more. For the past decade, Microsoft's hiring strategy had worked on a very simple model: "Everybody wants to work here, so we just have to decide which people we want." When Microsoft stopped being cool, they suddenly had to work a lot harder, and in a completely different way, to attract the employees they needed. In a mature company, the hiring process works both ways; the applicant tries to convince the employer to hire them, and the employer tries to convince the applicant that they would like to have the job. Just like Microsoft ten years ago, Google is in the middle of shifting from "the cool place where everybody wants to work" to being one of many options to be judged each on their individual merits.

When I visited Google in August, I spent the entire day inside a 10'x10' room answering questions. When I asked questions of my interviewers, the response was always either "I don't know anything about that, you should ask someone else", or "I'd love to talk about that, but I've got a time limit and lots of questions I need you to answer". I don't blame my interviewers for this; they did the best they could. I blame HR for setting up the process the way they did. In the end, Google was absolutely certain that they wanted to hire me, but they hadn't done anything to convince me that I wanted the job they were offering. None of my interviewers took me to their corner of the building and showed me what it was like to work at Google; none of my interviewers talked about the interesting problems they had worked on recently; in fact, none of them told me even remotely as much about Google as I had learned in 15 minutes of looking at the Google jobs website.

Was the hiring process unusually bungled in my case? Probably -- Google HR had trouble figuring out what I do (which is a separate issue for Google to fix. Note to recruiters: If you can't understand something on someone's CV, ask someone with a technical background to explain it to you. The question "do you have a Master's degree?" should never be asked of someone who has a doctorate). But even if they had decided what job I was being considered for before starting to interview me, I doubt it would have made any difference.

If you want to hire good people, be prepared to spend at least as much time showing them why they should accept your offer as you do deciding if you want to make them an offer. "We're cool" may be enough to convince some people; but the smarter people are, the less likely they are to drink Kool-Aid.

People who turned Google down?

[David Off]

How about a piece about people who turned Google down? Google were desperate to hire the writer of SquashFS onto their team of geeks, offering him all sorts of incentives to scrabble aboard (this was pre-IPO too). He turned them down because he didn't feel he would be free enough to continue development of SquashFS.

Kudos to the geek who puts OSS before a cushy job at Google and untold wealth in stock options.