My Nightmare Interviews With Google • Hacker News Board

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#31

Post by flatline » Fri, Nov 13, 2009, 6:29 PM UTC

jxcole wrote: post #27

zackattack wrote: post #14

That wasn't a nightmare interview; she is clearly unqualified for an analytical role. She should get a job in advertising instead.

To be honest, a moderately intelligent 5th grader could have answered that question about the 10 cents per ad. I know that math isn't her field, but on some level one is expected to be well rounded.

I could see having trouble answering something like this over the phone - especially if you have a bit of math phobia. That being said, Google was probably not the best match for her. Her guess at clickthrough rates was also kind of painful.

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#32

Post by yummyfajitas » Fri, Nov 13, 2009, 6:32 PM UTC

mronge wrote: post #22

wglb wrote: post #15

In engineering school, we got pretty familiar with BOEC (back of the envelope calculations), in some part to give a double check on calculations, and in other part (ahem) to double-check on slide rule calculations and exponent correction. But that is a useful skill, particularly in conjunction with a problem-solving attitude which they repeatedly emphasized us to do. And the book Innumeracy by Paulos gives examples o…

This was for a marketing position though, not an engineering position. I wouldn't expect someone trained in marketing to be good at BOEC or be as analytical as an engineer.

She also bombed a middle school level math problem.

One question (paraphrased): $0.10 cpc, with a 20% of visits resulting in a click. How many visits needed to make $20?

After five painful minutes the annoyed interviewer gave me the answer...She made it sound so easy; I felt like a moron.

She is innumerate.

If I were illiterate, I'd probably describe an interview at McGraw Hill as nightmarish. "After five painful minutes of trying to sound out the words the annoyed interviewer read the sentence to me...She made it sound so easy; I felt like a moron."

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#33

Post by te_platt » Fri, Nov 13, 2009, 6:33 PM UTC

I thought it was funny that the link she gave to "15 Google Interview Questions That Will Make You Feel Stupid" has wrong answers in the solutions. See if you can beat their answer for the two egg problem - Bonus prove your answer is actually the minimum possible.

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#34

Post by cdibona » Fri, Nov 13, 2009, 6:36 PM UTC

jazzychad wrote: post #3

These were just questions for a position as Associate Product Marketing Manager. During my senior-year interviews with Google for a Software Engineer position, there were 3 rounds, each getting increasingly harder, chock full of nothing but technical questions: some trivia (name all standard network port associations), some implementation (design a chat server), some theory (what is the big-O runtime advantage of dou…

Have you considered interviewing again (I'm assuming some time has passed)? I think its usually a pretty good sign when interviews go long. I think it might be worth your time. Feel free to email me if you'd like.

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#35

Post by dlevine » Fri, Nov 13, 2009, 6:39 PM UTC

I worked for Google for a few years, and did a lot of phone screens. Most of the people who I interviewed probably felt the same way as this lady. The process may seem brutal, but it is impossible to invite everyone in for an on-site interview, and the phone screen does a pretty good job of filtering out the definite nos (although I'm sure that some good candidates are rejected).

I could count the number of people who passed one of my phone screens on one hand (and I considered myself a fairly easy interviewer).

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#36

Post by mrshoe » Fri, Nov 13, 2009, 6:40 PM UTC

Google has interviewed tens of thousands of candidates in this manner. Other companies have interviewed even more, using roughly the same process. With all the preparation this girl put into her interview, I don't see how she possibly could have been surprised by those types of questions. The first piece of advice anyone will give you is that the final answer is not nearly as important as talking through the process you would use to solve the problem. Obviously she never even read that first piece of advice, because she blurted out a wild guess to the very first question. Don't let this happen to you!

Google's interview process isn't a nightmare. It's entirely typical. If you plan on interviewing for any job, you should spend a lot of time studying the interview process and how to excel in it. If you're interviewing for programming jobs, this course is an invaluable resource: http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/

Read all the handouts 5 times, and you won't be caught off guard like this girl was.

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#37

Post by cdibona » Fri, Nov 13, 2009, 6:42 PM UTC

wallflower wrote: post #25

Rigorous interviews will increase the false negative rate, at the expense of false positives. It's part of the culture at Microsoft and Google and other companies.

I don't know why people are downvoting you. I can tell you that I've seen the same thing and having dealt with the fallout of bad hiring, I'd rather miss some good or even great candidates rather than hire someone bad. Edi: To clarify: I work at Google.

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#38

Post by strlen » Fri, Nov 13, 2009, 6:44 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #30

Sounds like she is the "recite facts" type, rather than "quickly think critically" type. Google wants the second type of person, and it appears she is not that. So the interview process worked perfectly; she didn't get a job she wouldn't be good at, and Google doesn't have an employee that doesn't fit with them. I fail to see how this is a nightmare, other than that she'll have to work somewhere that makes her buy he…

What's also important is that it was a phone screen: this also saved employees' time on interviewing the person and company's time on flying out, wining and dining the person.

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#39

Post by adamc » Fri, Nov 13, 2009, 6:48 PM UTC

harpastum wrote: post #28

jonknee wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like that's what she was doing... "Associate Product Marketing Manager"

I realize that she was under some pretty severe stress, but a marketing manager that thinks gmail earns ~$70,000 a day? Or that each user will click on seven ads a day? “Google places four ads per e-mail opened in Gmail. Advertisers get to pick their click-through rates, which can be as little as $0.05...Say each G-mail user opens seven new e-mails a day. They would see 28 ads. If they click on ¼ of those ads, then o…

It says something about her current estimation skills. Are these skills she is often going to need in marketing?

But overall, it was probably a good thing for her not to go there. Sounds like Google has a particular mindset (one that reminds me, anecdotally, of stories of Microsoft 15-20 years ago), and she wouldn't fit there. I'm not at all convinced that means she couldn't be effective at marketing somewhere else, though.

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#40

Post by tomsaffell » Fri, Nov 13, 2009, 6:55 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #30

Sounds like she is the "recite facts" type, rather than "quickly think critically" type. Google wants the second type of person, and it appears she is not that. So the interview process worked perfectly; she didn't get a job she wouldn't be good at, and Google doesn't have an employee that doesn't fit with them. I fail to see how this is a nightmare, other than that she'll have to work somewhere that makes her buy he…

Totally agree that she was not right for the job, but the process was a bit nightmare-ish :

  “That’s all.  Good luck with your job search.”  The phone clicked-- I was stunned.

In my previous job I conducted a lot of interviews of an analytical style. Some people bombed so badly that is was clear well before the end that they wouldn't make the next round. In those cases, I used the remaining time to either talk to them about the career hopes/goals, or to explain how they could have better approached the problem (these skills are partly learnt..) to help prepare them for their next interview. The way I saw it was that they were expecting 30 mins of my time, so they would get it, even if they weren't up to the job. It a courtesy, and it's also self interest - burnt interviewees make a lot of noise on campus.

When I was 'senior' I never applied to McKinsey, because I'd heard so many horror stories about their interviews - I just didn't want to go anywhere near them. I landed a job with one of their main competitors and spent 5 happy years there...