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Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

yegor256.com

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Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#31

Post by ryandrake »

Unlike most of HN (it seems), I like hearing from recruiters, because despite the very low signal-to-noise ratio, there's always that remote chance that one of them could be able to set me up with a "dream job". It's zero cost to me to politely reply to a recruiter and ask for more info, and I try to at least respond to everyone. What I've found is that they must have a lot of candidates they're juggling because falling out of the funnel is surprisingly easy!

It's amazing how often "Hey, thanks for reaching out, I'm interested. Can you tell me more about the role?" results in the conversation ending right away. Probably over 50% recruiters that contact me do not reply back after that very polite and neutral response.

Many who do keep the conversation going have not read my profile or resume carefully, so I'll give them a summary of the types of work I'm actually interested in, which is never what they contact me for, and politely decline to move forward with the (usually way too junior) role they are looking to fill. That will almost always end the engagement.

Sure, it's a lot of noise, but filtering is very cheap: the time it takes to reply back. My actual success rate with recruiters probably pretty average. Of the eight or so jobs I've had in my ~20 year career, about three were obtained through recruiters, two times through in-house staff, once through an external recruiter.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#32

Post by malisper »

> I should have told her that I didn't want to be interviewed by some programmers, because I would most certainly fail. There was no need to try. I wanted to be interviewed by the person who really needs me: my future boss. That person will understand my profile and won't ask pointless questions about algorithms, simply because he or she will know what my duties will be and what kind of problems I will be capable of solving, if they hired me.

While I agree with the author about algorithm questions being relatively pointless, my sense is they don't know about the team matching process. After I interviewed with Google, they presented me with a list of a eight teams who were interested in me and asked me to rank them in order of preference. They then had me come back a second day and meet with the managers of the top four teams I selected. At the end of the day, I ranked the teams again. The team I ranked the highest who also wanted to hire me was the team I would have joined if I had accepted my offer.

I much prefer the current process where you have one day of general interviews, and then go back a second day and just talk with the managers of the teams you would be interested in. It would only make the process much more of a hassle for everyone involved if you had to be interviewed by the managers of every team for which there was mutual interest.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#33

Post by filoleg »

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #27
xt00 wrote: post #10

Places like google give you a guide on how to prepare. So it consists of stuff like algorithms and data structures. I do wonder sometimes how much it is tailored to getting people who are fresh out of college rather than more experienced. My take is that you basically have to spend time preparing and studying so as to get past those types of questions then finally you talk one on one with the people you likely would…

Why should skilled developers with extensive track-records in their field be forced to use their free time to cram for college-style exams? Other professions dealing with exact-sciences / engineering don't seem to have this problem..

While I agree with the sentiment, I wouldn't call it "college-style exams", to be honest. Colleges would be quite different if exams were conducted one-on-one, and instructor would have been willing to talk with you through the problem and cared more about your thought train and approach rather than the exact solution. In fact, I am pretty sure that if you just knew the correct solution and the answer to the coding interview and simply wrote it down silently on the whiteboard (which would be the best outcome on a college exam), you would be rejected instantaneously.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#34

Post by mabbo »

Amazon won't hire you just for one role. The company allows free movement between teams by SDEs. If you're an SDE, you're an SDE, and you're welcome to change teams so long as the new manager will take you.

If you don't know algorithms, maybe that's okay for the team you're joining. But hiring you means screwing over the team you're going to be on in 3 years. That's why they interview that way.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#35

Post by tetraodonpuffer »

iainmerrick wrote: post #30
stuckagain wrote: post #8

> There is no point in giving me binary-tree-traversing questions; I don't know those answers and will never be interested in learning them. Interview process: complete success.

I'd be interested in hearing from people who work at Google, and get to figure out a cool algorithm for solving an interesting puzzle-problem more an about once a year. I bet there aren't very many. In my experience, the stuff you do in this kind of interview has very little relation with the stuff you do in the actual job. (I wish it did! I love those algorithmic puzzles.)

figuring out a cool algorithm is not the same as learning 1000 algorithms by rote to prepare for an interview. Just because doesn't feel like doing test prep for an interview, it doesn't mean they don't have the brain capacity to actually solve the business problem when it comes up.

If in my day-to-day I need to use an AVL tree, I will get a library for it, I won't be reimplementing it from scratch every single time.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#36

Post by cortesoft »

You aren't going to interview with your future manager because they don't know who your future manager is. They need to hire hundreds of people, they aren't going to try to get separate candidates for each role, and they aren't going to have you interview with a hundred different managers.

My company is experiencing this as we grow; we have too many openings to have each team try to recruit for their open spots. We need a more general queue of talent to hire, so that we can interview for 10 open spots for every interview we do.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#37

Post by stuckagain »

iainmerrick wrote: post #30
stuckagain wrote: post #8

> There is no point in giving me binary-tree-traversing questions; I don't know those answers and will never be interested in learning them. Interview process: complete success.

I'd be interested in hearing from people who work at Google, and get to figure out a cool algorithm for solving an interesting puzzle-problem more an about once a year. I bet there aren't very many. In my experience, the stuff you do in this kind of interview has very little relation with the stuff you do in the actual job. (I wish it did! I love those algorithmic puzzles.)

I don't know about the average but at Google I probably write a new call to std::set::find twice an hour, and it's important to know that std::set is a red-black tree, and how std::set::find is implemented and how much that costs and so forth. Fluency with data structures and algorithms is not some kind of brain candy. It's absolutely necessary to get the job done.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#39

Post by sdenton4 »

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #27
xt00 wrote: post #10

Places like google give you a guide on how to prepare. So it consists of stuff like algorithms and data structures. I do wonder sometimes how much it is tailored to getting people who are fresh out of college rather than more experienced. My take is that you basically have to spend time preparing and studying so as to get past those types of questions then finally you talk one on one with the people you likely would…

Why should skilled developers with extensive track-records in their field be forced to use their free time to cram for college-style exams? Other professions dealing with exact-sciences / engineering don't seem to have this problem..

Mostly false. Other areas have professional exams, but they're generally industry standards instead of given by the hiring company. This is more efficient if you're a candidate, since you only need to take the test once. (Or more if you don't pass the first time.) My house mate just got a professional engineer's certificate after being at work in the field for about five years.

Of course, if we had this in swe land, it would probably end up looking a lot like those silly certificate programs in soon-to-be-obsolete tech of yesteryear...

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#40

Post by rdtsc »

> I learned my lesson two years ago, when Amazon tried to recruit me. I got an email from the company that said they were so impressed by my profile and couldn't wait to start working with me. They needed me, nobody else. I was naive, and the message did flatter me.

I learned mine with AWS as well:

Scheduled call. They forgot to call. Waited like an idiot for an hour. Ok fine big company yadda, yadda.

Had the phone interview. Liked me, called me onsite.

Before coming onsite was sent the Leaderhips Princples and told to learn and will be quizzed on them basically. Had 2 offers in hand already and was told they'd get back to me at most 2 days after the interviews.

Got to the site. Future manager who was supposed to interview me not there.

Whiteboard questions, solve some algorithm puzzles. "Tell me about your worst failure". Most people I talked to would not have even worked with. People did not seem happy, kept warning me about how hard it is to work there and so on. (Subconsciously perhaps telling me to stay away?)

Lunch time comes, at least think I'll eat lunch with future team. So I wait, and wait, and nobody shows up. Ended up wondering the hallways exploring. Hoping someone would ask me if I am supposed to be there.

Then I got a bit snarky after that and kind of gave up on the chance of wanting to work there.

Went home. It took them 3 weeks to call me. But I wasn't surprised by that point.

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