Live data from Hacker News

Why Google's hiring process is broken

blog.teambox.com

101–110 of 177 posts

Re: Why Google's hiring process is broken

#101
post #16

My 2 cents: I was contacted by a recruiter, unsolicited through a referral, and asked if I was interested in interviewing. At the time, I already had an offer from one of the other big companies, which I was upfront about. The recruiter said it was ok, and would set me up for the first round of interviews. After about a week of emails, I just simply stopped hearing from the recruiter. Not a single interview, no reaso…

You know who complains about Google's hiring process... people that don't get hired by Google. I've never heard anybody who WAS hired by Google complain about anything. Maybe you all just weren't good enough. That's OK, not everybody is the creme-a-la-creme. Look at Google's market cap and Android and Chrome's growth (not to mention their dominance in search and advertising)... Google doesn't need you, and that's why…

You know who complains about slavery? Slaves. I've never heard of a plantation owner who complained about slavery.

Re: Why Google's hiring process is broken

#102
post #16

My 2 cents: I was contacted by a recruiter, unsolicited through a referral, and asked if I was interested in interviewing. At the time, I already had an offer from one of the other big companies, which I was upfront about. The recruiter said it was ok, and would set me up for the first round of interviews. After about a week of emails, I just simply stopped hearing from the recruiter. Not a single interview, no reaso…

You know who complains about Google's hiring process... people that don't get hired by Google. I've never heard anybody who WAS hired by Google complain about anything. Maybe you all just weren't good enough. That's OK, not everybody is the creme-a-la-creme. Look at Google's market cap and Android and Chrome's growth (not to mention their dominance in search and advertising)... Google doesn't need you, and that's why…

"I've never heard anybody who WAS hired by Google complain about anything."

Yeah, I don't badmouth my employer in public either.

Re: Why Google's hiring process is broken

#103
post #16

My 2 cents: I was contacted by a recruiter, unsolicited through a referral, and asked if I was interested in interviewing. At the time, I already had an offer from one of the other big companies, which I was upfront about. The recruiter said it was ok, and would set me up for the first round of interviews. After about a week of emails, I just simply stopped hearing from the recruiter. Not a single interview, no reaso…

You know who complains about Google's hiring process... people that don't get hired by Google. I've never heard anybody who WAS hired by Google complain about anything. Maybe you all just weren't good enough. That's OK, not everybody is the creme-a-la-creme. Look at Google's market cap and Android and Chrome's growth (not to mention their dominance in search and advertising)... Google doesn't need you, and that's why…

It's creme-'de'-la-creme, baller.

Re: Why Google's hiring process is broken

#105

Lots of interesting stories. Disclaimer, I worked at Google for 4 years ('06 - '10) and interviewed a lot of folks (it was always a part of the job) and did a number of phone interviews too. The process then (as perhaps now) was broken and some folks within Google understood that. The process and goals were pretty simple, hire smart people that get things done. The process was aimed at finding smart people who get th…

Would you mind if I contact you with some questions? They don't relate to anything confidential, but they aren't the sort of things I can ask a recruiter.

My contact information is generally available in my profile. I realize that permission to contact is only implicit by that, I'll update my profile.

Re: Why Google's hiring process is broken

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know who complains about Google's hiring process... people that don't get hired by Google. I've never heard anybody who WAS hired by Google complain about anything. Maybe you all just weren't good enough. That's OK, not everybody is the creme-a-la-creme. Look at Google's market cap and Android and Chrome's growth (not to mention their dominance in search and advertising)... Google doesn't need you, and that's why…

You know who complains about slavery? Slaves. I've never heard of a plantation owner who complained about slavery.

Thomas Jefferson complained about slavery at the same time that he owned slaves, and he wasn't the only one. It's easy to condemn them for that now, of course. But we no doubt have our own such contradictions.

Re: Why Google's hiring process is broken

#107
post #60

Sometimes I feel like the only person who was not hired by Google that didn't become bitter. I was treated with respect, was put up in a nice hotel, met very smart people, answered (and didn't ;) very tough questions. In the end it didn't work out. I had a blast nonetheless.

Same here. I had two solid phone interviews, then they flew me out, put me up in a cool hotel, rented me a car, and put me through a good day on campus. Of the five interviews, I think I nailed four and blew one of them. Oh well, heard back around a week later that I didn't make the cut.

Re: Why Google's hiring process is broken

#108

(Posting anonymously because I'm in the middle of interviewing with Google) My experience so far has been very different. I was contacted by a recruiter a few weeks ago. I had a phone interview within a week of the initial contact. Within three days, they got back to me to schedule an onsite interview. The one negative I've encountered so far: Google has an office near where I live, but will not interview me there. T…

I'm going to guess you probably work near a Google office which does different things than your target role. I live in Chicago, where Google has an office, but they flew me out to Mountain View to interview for a software engineering spot.

Re: Why Google's hiring process is broken

#109
I submitted my resume to Google and filled out their top X language survey, but never even so much got back an email from them after waiting for over a month.

Oh well, there's plenty of other companies who were happy to talk to me.

Re: Why Google's hiring process is broken

#110

Google is considered (or at least was, by other tech companies) to have a very poor sourcing and general recruiting experience. It was assumed to be because they contract out the work. As a contrast to that, at MSFT, we had full-time recruiting staff generally split into college and experienced recruiting (there are some extra bits not important to this). The experienced recruiting staff was assigned to divisions and…

Your information is incorrect. Google does all its own recruiting. It is not outsourced.
Post reply on HN