Last year Google tried to convince me to join their ranks. I had a nice trip to Mountain View, a pleasant day of interviews, and a glimpse inside of their campus. All pretty cool. I ended up shutting down the process between the “we really want to hire you” and the “here’s the offer” phases, for any number of reasons that I won’t get in to tonight. Ok, just one of them. They were almost ready to make the “can’t refuse” offer but the process became bogged down when I couldn’t recall my college GPA. Given that I earned my degree in 1985 and have been earning a living by writing code since I was 15 or 16, this didn’t seem all that essential.
Funny thing is, I now have several more emails in my inbox from other Google recruiters. After reading these emails it appears that they don’t know that I interviewed there last year! Perhaps they don’t have this data in searchable form. Could that be?
The most recent email was actually kind of entertaining. I’m sure that its not proprietary, so I’ll share the best part with you:
So, before this amazingly comprehensive phone interview I am supposed to study the technical, competitive, and business aspects of their searching, mapping, blog searching, blogging, calendaring, document storage, finance, groups, social networking, and feed reading products.
Sure, and after I have done this and they invite me down, will they expect me to create dark matter from stuff found in the supply rooms, or to invent a unified field theory while standing at a whiteboard? Maybe I can do all of this while balancing on a Segway and sipping an Odwalla, just to make it challenging.
Strange.
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I’m still in love with the Google Labs Aptitude Test.
http://cruftbox.com/blog/archives/001031.html
Ali
Passive candidate sourcing is nonsense and a waste of resources. There are many talented people out there that aren’t in the roles they want to be – dating all the way back to 9/11 – so recruiters need to look at top education and competencies. This takes management engagement.
I’m looking for full time management roles, preferably in mobile search. I’ve worked in technology intense companies that transformed industries and am hungry to do it again.
My bio is on my blog. My many endorsements are on Linkedin.
Have you seen the “tips” Amazon suggests to prepare for an interview? The list of things to do to is equally comprehensive (if that’s the word you want to use to describe them).
They’ve been doing the same thing to me for more than a year. I would politely decline the offer of an interview, then a few months later they’d spam me again. The last time they contacted me, they left a comment on my site. I had to explain to them that while I admire all the great things Google does, it wasn’t appealing to go from being Chief Technologist at a small company I love (Clear Ink) to being a lowly software engineer at Google, adding at least two hours a day to my commute to boot. It was as if they had no context at all on who I am.
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I have a friend I hooked into an interview at Google about two years ago, and the sheer cluelessness of the process was really frustrating. The job description changed while she was interviewing, and they couldn’t keep track of whether she was still in consideration, and they really didn’t even understand the industry they were trying to hire her into (not search).
I had the same impression of cluelessness when I interviewed with them. I got calls and interviews from them 3 different time and twice by the same recruiter who apparently forgot he spoke to me already just months back!
http://kentsimperative.blogspot.com/2007/05/hr-woes-in-outside-world.html
We are personally aware of the case of one very talented, exceptionally qualified intelligence professional (with technological specialization in some areas Google was rapidly seeking to expand into), who liked the idea of trading in all of the black world for sunny California instead. This individual, whose particular expertise and background was more than simply unique, found out that the schizophrenia of the Googleplex ….
Jeff,
Great post, and one that I can understand completely. I interviewed with Google 2 years ago, received an offer, then I turned it down. Since that time, several Google recruiters have contacted me, and one very famous Amazonian-turned-Googler contacts me occasionally (you know who I’m talking about here) to let me know that the bridge has not been burned. Interesting stuff.
My favorite is I received an email from a recruiter, he asked if he could call at time X, he never called, and then sent an email four days later pointing me to their career page. Thanks!!
No wonder this is how they recruit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/artificialignorance/508004186/
ROFL.
I get asked all the time if we’ll sell out to [insert big company here]. When “big company” = Google, I always laugh at the question and reply “Well, I’m a college dropout, so they’d probably pay a ton of money for my company and then promptly fire me since my GPA isn’t up to snuff.”
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I went through the process a couple of years back, wasted almost 6 months until I was told they WOULD LOVE TO hire me, but not for the role I was interviewing for. Over those 6 months, during every single interview I mentioned the fact that I was really only interested in the specific role we were discussing.
I too had a recruiter call me back a few weeks ago, who hadn’t even bothered to google me to see if anything in my life had changed in the interim…
A lot of the google recruiters I have been contacted by are individuals who have their own recruiting companies (don’t officially work for google) and have their own google email address to say “no, really, we work for google.
I don’t know how much access they have to each others’ works and how much they all share with google anyway. They also appear to me to be disconnected from each other when they contact me.
I’m still a bit shocked they wanted your GPA from 20 years ago. A somewhat more rational hiring process would probably recognize that is no longer a very useful indicator of much of anything, given the amount of time that has passed. Sounds like a holdover from their fresh-out-of-Stanford mindset.
Reminds me of when I put in an application for some government work, and they default asked for my high school (!!) transcripts (reading off whatever checklist they had). I replied “ah, I have bachelors and masters degrees.” They promptly shelved the request.
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That’s nothing. For one job I was computer-tested twice and interviewed twice by four people at three different locations, on different days. What a waste of gas.
Hey money hides all. Google makes a lot of people a lot of money. So people tolerate their “evil” and their silliness. Once the money dries up (or at least growth), then watch out for the scandals and reality behind the scenes (already started happening with Schmidt’s $1 salary and $500K security budget, Brin’s wife getting google investment, etc…).
Oh and did you realize the founder of YouTube was married/engaged to Jim Clark’s daughter and investors for YouTube and Google are similar? Google is not magic, just money.
I’ve also had multiple recruiters from Google contact me and not realize that I’d had various discussions with other Grecruiters.
Very odd.
Amazon and/or A9 seem much better organized about this. They call/email like clockwork and always seem to know about previous discussions.
I had an interview with someone named Rajiv who was in charge of Ad Agency Relationships. The guy was a moron. He couldn’t answer basic questions about how an agency is structured. He had been a banker before taking the position… probably had a great GPA but didn’t know the first thing about the real world.
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I guess the 2 events happened in the same Map pass before Reduce had time to start. Or did your first negative answer had a Pragma: no-cache header?
The internal talks I give at Google about API Evangelism usually have a slide about you as a good role model.
You’ll always been welcome at the Googleplex to chat about APIs while sipping an Odwalla:-)
P@
A friend recently got a Google recruitment email. I think they’ve taken the carpet bombing approach to recruiting lately.
Heh, I’d rather work for Yahoo! than Google any day. Funny how much hype there is around getting a job at GOOG.. trying to recall who else had that hype. Netscape I know, not sure about Apple.
I am a technology manager and was clear upfront that I am no longer a hands on programmer. Every person I spoke with I explained that these days, I manage programmers, but don’t do any programming myself. I spoke with 7 people and 7 times I declared that I don’t program any longer. They kept pushing me through the process and then I heard nothing for a few weeks. I called the recruiter back to check where things were and was told: “We decided to pass since you were not a programmer”. Sheesh, couldn’t we have figured that out 3 months and 7 conversations ago?…big waste of time. BTW, with 10,000+ employees, don’t you think they need a manager or two?
Anyone who would work at GOOG today is either a) terribly afraid of risk, b) likes insanity, or c) has no other options.
There are SOO many better things one can do with their energy and SOO many better companies offering upside financial potential.
Hey, I can do you one better. I used to work at Google, then quit, and then a year later got a cold email from a recruiter. No reply, of course, when I wrote back. I imagine they outsource a lot of recruiting, probably hard to keep all the contacts straight.
I’d rather hire someone who earned their way and respects customers…regardless of GPA, school name or degree at all. Really? does it matter? Smart people are everywhere, I don’t even claim my MBA anymore as most are jerks who don’t respect customers, don’t really understand the development process and are often delusional. Jeff…keep up the good work, you are making a difference.
How to recruit, by degree (PhD, a must), Google test, innovative ideas. or by Programming skills. Can a guy like Bill Gates with no degree be recruited.
They keep trying to hire me but I keep telling them it would be better to just acquire my company
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But what about the free food!!! Ha,Ha!
Patty Zambrano
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I could almost write a book about my experiences with Google recruitment. I was contacted, raved over, told I was “perfect”, then silence for three weeks until I contacted them. They said, “Oh, I thought I’d contacted you!” and explained they were considering someone else now and would I be interested in a different position? Said I was, but then that fell through for reasons which were “confidential”. Then they contacted me again out of the blue six months later and asked if I still wanted the first job, but clearly weren’t pleased when I couldn’t remember the finer details of the ‘test’ they’d given me to complete six months earlier! Like what the answer to Question B on Page 2 was… anyway, I’ll stop ranting but it was by far the most bizarre, stressful and poorly-handled recruitment process I’d ever seen. Best company to work for? I doubt it.
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Google is far too concerned with such relatively minor trappings as GPA and particular schools when it comes to people with real world experience. I personally know of more than one very talented person with years of experience that Google won’t give the time of day to once it finds out the schools they attended. It will cost Google in the long run and I think it’s already starting to show.
Is there anyone who hasn’t been contacted by Google?
A friend of mine started working there recently and was asked to provide the names of five people he thought were talented. He gave my name, and sure enough, I got a call from a completely clueless recruiter who had no idea why he was calling me, other than that my name was on the list. At one point he said ‘I’m looking at your website, but I can’t really figure out what you do’.
He then tried to shoe-horn me into a product manager role, before asking me to send him my CV. I laughed. I haven’t given out a CV for at least seven years, and I’m not about to start now. If they want me for the skills and knowledge I have, then that’s one thing. If they just want a bum on a seat, I’m not interested.
I got contacted by a recruitment firm last year looking for SEO talent. I told her that the only way she’d tempt me back into the formal and fulltime workforce was with a job offer from Google, Amazon etc. She squealed and said “Oh it says here they’re with Google”. I took the time to explain what the job description (that I hadn’t seen) probably said and what it meant in plain english. I was right. She promised to come back to me when Google start using her as their recruiter.
I guess recruiters have a specific set of skills – and the job they’re recruiting for isn’t in there
It sounds like Google is so optimized to hire fresh graduates who are ready to swap college campus life for corporate campus life that they have no idea how to hire someone with an “off-campus” life.
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Nice story. In fact the first of its kind which talks about evils of Google’s selection process. Why do you need to callback SSC marks when you have already impressed them with your tech skills – that’s what they were looking for before calling you.
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I had back-to-back phone interviews with the Director of Business Development followed by the Business Development Director. When I asked one how his job was different from the other, half the conversation was wasted on tracking down the coordinator who gave out his title incorrectly.
There will come a day when the music will stop for Google and there will be more people than chairs left. You need look no further than Microsoft if you want evidence.
When the euphoria dies down and Adwords and Adsense run their natural course, Google will need just as many talented sales and marketing folks to get deals done, think laterally about JV’s, find solutions to the clients problems and ultimately keep going when the technical folks want to stop.
Business is about balance and the danger with stacking the deck full of wonderfully talented super geeks who can code and who have the “right” academic qualifications with impressive GPA’s is that you will always need people who can sell what they design and build.
There are just some things that you cant teach at University, no matter how hard. Tom Peters definition of an MBA is Profit = Revenue minus costs. Thats it. Period. Ok, this might be a slightly cynical perspective, but my fear is that Google is way too influenced by a score on a piece of paper.
I had the privilege of visiting the Googleplex this week and while I was in awe of what they have achieved, knew that it was no place for me to work given my lack of academic qualifications and the fact that I am a simple sales and marketing guy.
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“Heh, I’d rather work for Yahoo! than Google any day.”
That has got to be the most retarded thing I read all year.
Is Amazon.com any better? The recruiters may be more organized, but isn’t Amazon infested with the D.E. Shaw, “my SATs are better than yours” attitude? Could someone get an offer without disclosing their SATs/college GPA?
Investment banks are better at hiring people than Google? Wow.
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After reading this, now I am not surprised or feel too bad about my experience with Google’s hiring process… I interviewed with them in last December, and it lasted through January. In February, their recruiter told me that they were done with my interview. In March she told me that they were working on my offer. In April their “big boss” told me that they were very close to make an offer. In May, the boss told me that they were “ready to make the offer”. Now it’s June, and I still have not hear the offer, or decline, for that matter. Sometime I do wonder, if it takes more than 6 months to hire someone, how can they maintain agility in their business. Or, is it because the one who has the final say on hiring, is constantly changing his/her mind of whether to bring someone on board? Anyway, it’s almost a surreal experience. I am very disappointed.
I think Google interview completely sucked. They don’t distinguish the interview process for a devloper from a tech manager, it is striking they asked the same questions for both developer and manager and they treat tech manager as a code monkey as well. I don’t like SteveB, but he said something I completely agree: how the heck a random collection of people doing their own things will generate value? Google is stil a young company, its current success doesn’t guarantee anything in the future. Google is getting very arrogant now.
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I cannot believe the narcissism and arrogance displayed in some of these postings. What’s with the gratuitous insults? Generally, anyone who is so bitter about an experience has had their EGO hurt. So they didn’t roll out the red carpet and set up an entire entourage just for you? Awwwwww… poor babies! No company is perfect. Get over it. I really would like to be able to say to some of you guys, “Just be glad you have a paycheck.” But — this is America, after all, land of the overweight, Big Mac eating, George W. Supporter. Oh well…..
Does anyone know of a Google recruiter for content/marketing/editorial positions? I would think that especially in light of the YouTube addition, they would have recruiters in this area. Despite my qualifications “impressing” other big companies, I can’t get an indication of whether or not Google is even interested… I’ve been in touch with a very personable IT recruiter, but he says he doesn’t have contact with any potential content/marketing/editorial recruiters. Is he just blowing me off or what? Does anyone know of a contact? You can email me at me@jenniferneeley.com. Any (non-hostile please!) thoughts are much appreciated
Thanks for sharing your experiences!
I am going thru the preliminary Google Recruitment process…I was just asked for my GPAs from college and grad school (30 years ago…)
I don’t think I’ve actually ever been asked for my GPA before in all these years!
What a turnoff. “Oh, it’s a very important part of our process…and we can’t proceed without it.”
And this from Stanford guys, inventors of the “A,B,C, no Credit” grading system?
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Despite all the negative expereinces, can anyone hook me up with a Google recruiter? I have great GPAs! You can email me at susancampbell07@gmail.com. Thanks!
Do you have a actual contact number or email address for a google recruiter? I would like to contact them directly. Thank you.
What is quite interesting is this post appears to be top most search result in http://www.live.com ( search word : google interview process )
I’ve recently been contacted by a google recruiter and am going through the first steps. Hopefully i’ll have better luck than the bitter individuals here!
My grades/gpa are not as high as most, however they need to realize that geniuses don’t care about grades ;p
Boy am I glad I didn’t get that job as a Recruiter in Google!
I been there too… Seven interviews with Google to be turned down in favor of “someone” with more “management experience”. The whole process took over 6 months and the funny thing was that 99% of the time spent in interviews was about technical stuff (operations) and not management; even though the role has a managerial part. The most weird thing is that the position – two months after they turned me down – is still available on their web site. It sounds to me that they just want to drive people mad and give Yahoo some more customers
It proves how thier recruiting methods do not work. I do not think they know how to identify exceptional talent. Even when it is clearly articulated and demonstrated. GPA 3.6, Top 5 in my class at WIT.
I especially enjoyed the post from Eric — 6/6/2007 @ 7:45 pm
It proves how thier recruiting methods do not work. I do not think they know how to identify exceptional talent. Even when it is clearly articulated and demonstrated. GPA 3.6, Top 5 in my class at WIT
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