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Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

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Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#41

Post by iainmerrick »

stuckagain wrote: post #22
johannes1234321 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a complete success they would have a way to filter out people without algorithm knowledge early on. A day of interviews already costs them some money, especially on the scale they are doing this.

Yeah maybe you are right on that point. At Google at least the filtering by stage seems to be: Recruiter phone interview: do you speak English? Technical phone interview: have you ever programmed a computer before? Technical on-site interview: do you know a few things about data structures and algorithms?

What's funny is that Google seems to think they're really good at interviewing -- for example, see this Washington Post puff piece: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/an-i... Possibly they are, but it's hard to see solid evidence one way or the other. I guess they can't be really bad in the sense of hiring mostly bad candidates, as that would surely cause big problems before long. But they could be about the same as other big bay area companies.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#42

Post by ryandrake »

noonespecial wrote: post #4

Its the London Cabbie(1) method. They're not looking to fill any particular role. They're just looking for smart people (for the value of smart that fits their biases). They just need as many warm bodies as possible to ram through their test so that a few trickle out the bottom of the funnel to keep the ranks from shrinking. If too many started getting hired, they'd add competitive basket weaving to the skillset if t…

> They're not looking to fill any particular role. They're just looking for smart people

I've found this to be decidedly not true, from many recruiter contacts. They have a role in mind they're trying to fill and if you point out that it's far more junior than what you're looking for, the conversation's over.

Think about how must companies hire. The hiring manager fights internally and finally gets a req for a very specific role. They have to fill that role. Having a generally smart person would be great but they have this immediate need and they can only hire one person. And once that req is filled, no more hiring until you get another req.

I'd love to see a company literally just looking to snap up smart people and then have them come in and kind of define their own role, one where they can add the most value. Nobody does this!

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#43

Post by overcast »

40acres wrote: post #26

There is no standard way to interview a software engineer. Whenever one of these threads come up we see multiple posters explaining their process, and while each process has it's upsides and downsides, no two are exactly the same. For a company the size of Google, with the amount of applicants they receive, I would assume that an interview standard is absolutely necessary. It's not perfect, but for 95% of developers…

The problem here is that he wasn't pursuing it, they were pursuing him. Maybe the issue lies in the actual recruitment process, and not the stupid interview questions.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#44

Post by arielweisberg »

noonespecial wrote: post #4

Its the London Cabbie(1) method. They're not looking to fill any particular role. They're just looking for smart people (for the value of smart that fits their biases). They just need as many warm bodies as possible to ram through their test so that a few trickle out the bottom of the funnel to keep the ranks from shrinking. If too many started getting hired, they'd add competitive basket weaving to the skillset if t…

And in theory it should totally be worth it as a candidate unless they are coasting on reputation. Otherwise the supply of candidates would dry up. In practice it wasn't for me, but I refused to tell them how much I made just to see what would happen.

If you interview at Google and they ask how much you make you should probably tell them or you might get a weak non-negotiable offer. Unless what you make is already far less than their "standard offer."

It would be a shame to waste all that effort by sticking to negotiation techniques that maybe don't work on Google for regular candidates.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#45

Post by rb1 »

ryandrake wrote: post #31

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 fall…

Now consider this approach with spam.

To paraphrase you, there's always that remote chance that one of the Nigerian Princes could actually need your help.

I used to do a similar thing to you, but it's too much work now and the levels of job spam ("Oil pipeline engineer" roles, simply because my CV has the word engineer in it (prefixed with Software)... lazy recruiter, that's bad!). Basically, if they can't make the effort, why should I? I guess the answer is, "Because there's always that remote chance that one of them could be able to set me up with a "dream job""..

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#46

Post by hbosch »

mabbo wrote: post #34

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.

Nit: I believe you can't move more freely than once every 30 days or so. ;)

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#47

Post by ubernostrum »

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.

Why do they try to "recruit" him in the first place, then, and "waste" recruiter time and phone-screen time on him and people like him? Remember: this isn't people applying to Google out of the blue: this is people Google has actively courted to apply.

I did a couple rounds of their interviews a while back just to see if they really were as bad as people said they were (yup!). And that was in response to a very persistent recruiter emailing me over and over and over again to apply, despite my knowing there was zero chance I'd be a fit for the job they asked me to apply to.

And more generally: I don't really care about binary trees. They're simply not relevant to the work I do. I suppose if someday the only way I can get a job is to buy a book with all the stock interview questions in it and memorize the answers, then that's what I'll do. But if somebody's hiring me, I want them to hire me for the things I know that aren't standard interview questions anyone can memorize.

The way I try to phrase this to people who don't get it is: my metaphorical working set in memory does not include basic algorithms (that's what libraries are for), and does not include brainteasers or riddles. It does include a lot of arcana about how web application stacks work, the network and gateway protocols they use, the points where security and reliability issues are most likely to happen and how to avoid those issues, the application and database architecture patterns most often needed, available libraries and frameworks which implement them, pros and cons of different approaches, etc., etc. I could, if so inclined, probably take the metaphor all the way and outline which things are in the equivalent of CPU cache vs. the equivalent of main memory.

So sure, I could page all that out to disk and forcibly cram a binary-tree answer into my brain's L1 or L2 cache, or load up one of the dynamic-programming questions Google loves (tip if you want to work for Google: memorize the Wikipedia article on longest common subsequence, even if it will never ever be relevant to anything you'll ever do, because they will have you do it in an interview). But that would be actively harming my own usefulness, and I'm not willing to do that for Google or for anyone else.

Which I guess raises the question: why do you apparently want me to harm my own usefulness just to try to get a status-symbol passing grade on a Google interview?

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#48

Post by numbsafari »

tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #35
iainmerrick wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You might not need to implement it, but you needed to know enough to know what an AVL tree is, why you might (or might not) need it, and to be able to do some basic validations on the library you selected to make sure that it does what you are hiring it to do.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#49

Post by Le_SDT »

ryandrake wrote: post #42
noonespecial wrote: post #4

Its the London Cabbie(1) method. They're not looking to fill any particular role. They're just looking for smart people (for the value of smart that fits their biases). They just need as many warm bodies as possible to ram through their test so that a few trickle out the bottom of the funnel to keep the ranks from shrinking. If too many started getting hired, they'd add competitive basket weaving to the skillset if t…

> They're not looking to fill any particular role. They're just looking for smart people I've found this to be decidedly not true, from many recruiter contacts. They have a role in mind they're trying to fill and if you point out that it's far more junior than what you're looking for, the conversation's over. Think about how must companies hire. The hiring manager fights internally and finally gets a req for a very s…

I think Valve works a bit like that from what I've read.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#50

Post by sumeno »

rb1 wrote: post #45
ryandrake wrote: post #31

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 fall…

Now consider this approach with spam. To paraphrase you, there's always that remote chance that one of the Nigerian Princes could actually need your help. I used to do a similar thing to you, but it's too much work now and the levels of job spam ("Oil pipeline engineer" roles, simply because my CV has the word engineer in it (prefixed with Software)... lazy recruiter, that's bad!). Basically, if they can't make the e…

Recruiters and Nigerian scams aren't comparable. People legitimately get jobs through recruiters. I got my dream job through a recruiter who found me. Nobody gets the Nigerian Prince's money
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