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My Nightmare Interviews With Google

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Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#111

Post by Shana »

dsplittgerber wrote: post #80
Shana wrote: post #52

I'm her age. This is essentially a case question straight out of a consulting book. I'm out of practice for it. Way out of practice. Meanwhile, I'm scared stiff of applying for jobs because my entire class has gone crazy about how to behave, what to say, what is the right answer to questions like this. I know I'm not perfect already. I know I have work to do to get better. and the bAck of the evenvelop question is on…

You sound like you're going to break down any minute. Seriously, please relax! If a company seriously cares about the exact wording of your answers, you obviously would not want to work there. Management consultancy is a load of stuff any intelligent and hard-working human can do, they just want to test your basic intelligence and reasoning and check to see if you seem like a sufficiently nice human. Don't sweat it t…

I realize that. I also don't want to work for McKinsey. I don't think management consulting would be a good fit. Really, I think I have too much of humorous subversive streak for that.

I realize I can do a lot of things with time and effort. I feel pressure on the time part, Overloaded. I'm doing a bit too much on top of that. I'm a little less that one week to my bachelor's critique in new media/internet art. We're a crazy bunch of folk, them artists. Long term I want to switch to learning coding, and haven't had the time to sit down and even think yet...

Or really apply for jobs yet. That's uhhh after next week, after I finish classes. When I know where I'm living/doing. That's normal for a college student though where I am...jumpy folk, mostly halfway through a very short midterm cycle...BA nearly got deleted, those sorts of things. still coming off of that sort of thing.

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#112

Post by Shana »

camccann wrote: post #103
Shana wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've taught some very intillegent third graders. No. No they wouldn't have under the time constraints and pressures. People blank with pressure. The first thing the interviewer should do is lay off the pressure not turn it on. Seniors and Out of Job People tend to freak. First easy thing to do which isn't describe. Tell the person to sit down with a pen and paper. And then talk about the why and how. That was the dem…

People blank with pressure. The first thing the interviewer should do is lay off the pressure not turn it on. Seniors and Out of Job People tend to freak. Even at Google, a job is not a vacation. Wanting to hire people who react well under pressure is completely valid. The mistake, which is not at all unique to Google, is to think that "high pressure interrogation at a job interview" is usefully similar to the kind o…

No job is a vacation: I've done work under pressure as well for both school and other land.

Google is not going to be bankrupt in a week. If your interviewer is really smart, do the Seth Godin thing: freelance the person for a few weeks, or offer them a real life case they are currently working on to see what that person is actually going to do.

One of the ways I figured out I would make a horrible teacher was I worked as a teacher. I really believed and worked very hard as a teacher. Ultimately, I needed a more collaborative environment, and I was stressed out because I met some really smart kids who were flunking half of exams on purpose when I confronted them about it. They would not work with me to fix these skills in third grade, particularly when there were background issues going on, and I was not the primary teacher. I found it not appropriate for me. I found that really high pressure, and not appropriate for me. Meanwhile, I know I will stay up all night on my own unpaid looking for affordance of different websites and how they can be applied for different business reasons. There you go? That seems to be appropriate for me. I just wish I knew more people in that field, and I wish I had the time to learn to code (after first round BA critiques....)

Interviewers need to sit down and know what is the pressures of the job, Half that interview would not have helped her at all. Furthermore, It is can I work with that person on the job, and help me and her reach a goal under pressure. That's a reasonable expectation. Very reasonable.

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#113

Post by ilkhd »

I once came on interview with a very big company, a lady that interviewed me slowly began to become medieval and very angry - for no reason, so I got afraid of her and just walked away myself, for goodnes sake. A guy before her was friendly.

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#114

Post by Shana »

nostrademons wrote: post #105
Shana wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've taught some very intillegent third graders. No. No they wouldn't have under the time constraints and pressures. People blank with pressure. The first thing the interviewer should do is lay off the pressure not turn it on. Seniors and Out of Job People tend to freak. First easy thing to do which isn't describe. Tell the person to sit down with a pen and paper. And then talk about the why and how. That was the dem…

There're a couple parts to your comment. Yes, some third graders could do that no problem, even under the time constraints and pressure. I certainly could - I think I could actually have done it faster in 3rd grade than I could now. It's just like a math test or math competition, and good students have no trouble getting perfect scores on a math test even under intense time constraints ( The second point of your comm…

That and how to work with people to get to the answer.

I would want to work out that problem with someone. For that math problem right:

lets ignore the 20 people problem (aka 20%) right now and pretend that all the people who visisted clicked. for every 100 people who visit, they now get 1 dollar (it was ten cents) before). in order to get $20 if a hundred people visited for every dollar, you would need

20,000 people.

One problem, they need to click. and only 20 people click per 100 people. so in order to really make that money, you would have to multiply again by 20. I would take the 2s out and start counting 0s because I would get confused at this point.

400,000 people. I think. I may have screwed up the 0s. But If I didn't have a chance to slow down and write down the problem I think I would have screwed that up badly. I'm not sitting around and doing those math problems all the time...

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#115

Post by tedunangst »

roc wrote: post #82
cdibona wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You always run the risk of hiring someone bad. Interviewing, particularly rigorous interviewing, is a game that doesn't map very well onto work itself. That's why the true test of a hiring process is the firing process. If you can get rid of people that can't hack it, rather than letting them gather as detritus in your system, you'll be far better off than if you simply pretend that you can actually avoid mistakes.

Hiring two people so you can fire one is a lot more expensive than interviewing 10 to start.

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#116

Post by azanar »

cookiecaper wrote: post #86
blinks wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rather than some half-assed assessment of me as a person > made in an interview. Any judgement made in a 45-minute (or less!) interview is going to be half-assed. That's the unfortunate way of the world. How do you think people should interview? (Genuinely curious; I do interviews, and I think I do pretty well, but it's difficult to honestly examine one's own methods without feedback.)

If I may interject, I think in most cases it's much, much better to use a network of connections rather than random walk-ins. You're much more likely to get someone that not only performs well, but also fits in well with your company's personalities. If you have to interview strangers, I think it's good to inquire into their technical background until you have ample confidence in their technical abilities, and take t…

If I may interject, I think in most cases it's much, much better to use a network of connections rather than random walk-ins. You're much more likely to get someone that not only performs well, but also fits in well with your company's personalities.

It is possible that this person is being interviewed by Google as a result of a referral by another employee within the Google, or even a referral from the hiring manager themselves.

Unless what you mean is that a hiring manager only consider people whom he and every other potential interviewer already know before the interview process even begins. The odds of ending up with such an arrangement at a place the size of Google, or even a place 1/100th the size of Google, seem insanely remote.

Someone on an interview loop at a large organization is bound to not know you from every other candidate who walks in the door. Even with phone interviews, odds are they call people based on factors entirely other than "do they know this person?" The best he may know about you is that some other person in the organization referred you, but it is not obvious whether they'll appreciate knowing this or be pissed off that their objectivity is now screwed. Some interviewers really prize trying to be as objective as possible in interviews, because interviews have a habit of being horribly imprecise anyway. But then, so do referral from J. Random Employee ("I have this cousin who's really good with computers; he helped me setup Outlook and everything. We should hire him a as software engineer.")

But then, maybe that is your point. If a company ends up at a size where they can't rely on connections, they're too big already.

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#117

Post by donaldc »

webwright wrote: post #66
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…

The interview process in this case worked fine. But it's silly and probably causes them to miss a LOT of good candidates. It's measuring a subjects ability to think critically... quickly and while under a lot of pressure. Is SPEED of critical thinking important? How many positions at Google require people to think on their feet? How many positions require them to be comfortable/effective talking to strangers on the p…

Speed of critical thinking for simple questions like the $0.10 ad-click question probably is important. If someone can't figure out the answer to that one pretty fast, they're probably not going to successfully figure out really hard problems at all.

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#118

Post by jtbarrett »

webwright wrote: post #66
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…

The interview process in this case worked fine. But it's silly and probably causes them to miss a LOT of good candidates. It's measuring a subjects ability to think critically... quickly and while under a lot of pressure. Is SPEED of critical thinking important? How many positions at Google require people to think on their feet? How many positions require them to be comfortable/effective talking to strangers on the p…

With regards to your last point: I don't doubt that the vast majority of hiring processes aren't correlated with on-the-job success, but Google is definitely the kind of company that would strive for objective measures and to refine their process. They at least claim it's working. I think it was on the Stack Overflow podcast that I heard a discussion of Peter Norvig's remarks about this in Coders at Work. He evidently posted something similar online:

"Our interviews are more to do with practical problem solving, not with puzzles and tricks. Our interview scores actually correlate very well with on-the-job performance: we are doing quite well at hiring the right people, we believe, and we work hard at analyzing the process. Peter Seibel asked me if there was anything counterintuitive about the process and I said that people who got one low score but were hired anyway did well on-the-job. To me, that means the interview process is doing very well, not that it is broken. It means that we don't let one bad interview blackball a candidate. We'll keep interviewing, keep hiring, and keep analyzing the results to improve the process." http://www.mv-voice.com/square/index.php?i=3&d=&t=16...

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#119

Post by Shana »

anigbrowl wrote: post #67
zachware wrote: post #43

This wasn't an interview, it was a test. I had a similar experience with a startup. I was interviewing for a Marketing Communications Manager position. Essentially PR. One of the unofficial interviewers (at 24 year old MIT engineer working as an email marketer) challenged me with the question "How many barbers are in San Francisco?" We proceeded to map it out the analytical process on the whiteboard. He wanted to see…

I don't think this is such a terrible thing, although clearly this adversarial approach to testing ideas isn't for you, or everyone. Enrico Fermi used to challenge grad students with similar questions, the famous example being 'how many piano tuners in Chicago?'. I don't think it's a stupid or impossible question, but one that seeks to establish how you go about estimating tricky things and thus identifying fruitful…

You know, the University of Chicago still sounds like it.

The best answer would be, there are 14 haircutting places within the shopping disctructs of the U of C, and it is currently overzoned for hair currently, accroding to the maroon. Only two are true barbershops. It consists of three long blocks. Lets take the U of C landscape to be somewhat abnormal, and that there should really only be 7, of which 1 is a barbershop. There are about 24 neighborhoods in chicago. There should be 24 barbershops...ect ect....

Just for the record...

Re: My Nightmare Interviews With Google

#120

Post by nostrademons »

chris100 wrote: post #7
jmount wrote: post #2

"Everyone says your GPA doesn’t matter when you’re finding a job." Uh, maybe for a second job- but when you are still a senior in school your GPA is one (admittedly crude) measure of how well you were doing at your last occupation (student).

As a hiring manager, I'll take internship or side-project coding experience over GPA anyday. Sure, a good GPA is good. But if you back it up with experience , you are ahead.

Most of the applicants that Google accepts have side projects and internship experience and a good GPA.
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