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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

#461

Post by disordr »

cortesoft wrote: post #36

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 n…

I recently interviewed and accepted a position at Amazon. Prior to the interview the recruiters did a great job of preparing me for what to expect. My direct manager was also part of the interview team, so I got to meet them. Overall it was a very pleasant experience, which is part of the reason I decided to join.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#462

Post by kcorbitt »

ryandrake wrote: post #409
sumeno wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes that the Venn diagram of "top candidates" and "people actively looking for jobs" overlaps significantly. The best candidate for a job may not be looking for a job so companies pay recruiters to find them. If the quality that companies were getting from regular applications was better than the quality they get from their recruiters why would companies pay to have recruiters?

I think we're agreeing with each other. Recruiters are needed if the job does not fill itself naturally, and a job will tend to get the candidate flow it deserves. If there's an awesome job available out there, with way above average pay, benefits, great opportunities for advancement, good work/life balance, etc., you'll fill it with a top talent. You're not going to need a recruiter. Word will get around even to peo…

Google and Facebook both pay reasonably above-market and have high employee satisfaction, and receive more resumes in a month than they could possibly hire in the next 10 years. They also both have ginormous internal recruiting departments.

They could definitely fill their need for new software engineers naturally, but presumably have data that the quality of candidates they get by bothering a substantial fraction of the world's software engineers on ~a yearly basis gets them better applicants and engineers.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#464

Post by munificent »

cmollis wrote: post #312
munificent wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is not sensitive to non-algorithmic skills and talents that interviewees have. I work at Google and do interviews (though I don't enjoy them). We do ask questions around domain expertise, software design, etc. It's not all just coding and algorithms. A good question: 1. Has a low enough floor that a poor candidate can still make some progress and not feel like they are doing poorly and get stressed out. 2. Has a…

My experience hiring at (YouTube.. at the google campus), was similar to the original post. 3 phone screens (which I must have done ok on), and then they flew me out to CA. I went through the interview process.. got tripped up on the 'puzzle' questions (which I thought was bullshit for a Python programming job.. but whatever), and then didn't get the job. I actually agree with what was said in the original post: this…

    > However, I can tell you what definitely was a complete turn-off,
    > was the odd obsession of seemingly everyone there with where I/(you)
    > went to school.
Ugh, that's really frustrating. I'd like to think they were just searching for common ground, but jeez.

Candidates should be judged based on what they know, not where they happened to have acquired that knowledge.

I am a college dropout and I had no idea what a rare breed I was at Google until after I got hired. (I came from the game industry where college degrees weren't as important.) There are so many over-achievers here, that I think many Googlers have never even considered that someone may not have gone to one of the top ten CS schools in the US. Especially in Mountain View, literally everyone they know probably has.

It's a weird bubble.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#465

Post by HarryHirsch »

joshuakarjala wrote: post #372
michaelhoffman wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CEO of a small company once sent me what might have been a really interesting opportunity and I was going to reply but then I noticed the tracking links and realized it was just a very-well-crafted form letter. I stopped considering it then.

Keep in mind - the CEO in question could be writing personal e-mails out from an ATS / Sourcing tool that helps keep track of communications. Tracking links are not always == shotgun approach

Tracking links are always extremely bad form, though. I'd be interested in hearing from the other side, though, why such behaviour would be considered acceptable.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#466

Post by msangi »

Jach wrote: post #389
stcredzero wrote: post #148

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. Let's presume this is out of preference and not ability. It's a pretty basic concept. If your preference stops you from learning something as basic as this as a programmer, then it doesn't seem likely that you will be motivated to keep up with even more abstruse concepts. Nearly e…

I'd rather hire someone who can actually get the job done in a timely manner. We can optimize it later, especially after profiling to know exactly what we need to optimize, and especially if there are security implications that mean we can't ruthlessly optimize everything. People who optimize too soon end up with solutions that are hard to change later, or solutions that don't even do the job they're supposed to. It'…

The problem is when the goal is to get something out of the door as soon as possible. In such cases developers tend to settle for the first thing that comes to their mind, which is rarely an elegant solution.

These require experience and time spent carefully designing the system. A profiler shows you what is slow in your current implementation, not how to convert it to a more elegant one.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#467

Post by siliconc0w »

Companies who need to hire a lot of general purpose high quality engineers who are highly desirable can design interview processes with high false negative rates. Where his argument gets off the rails is that it's hard to really argue a good facility with data structures and algorithms isn't at least one strong heuristic for a software engineer.

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#468

Post by mooreds »

dsk139 wrote: post #281
jonmoshier wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How'd you get started doing recruiting? I've been talking with recruiters lately and I find myself doing enough tech explaining to recruiters that I've wondered if I could consult for them. Interested to hear about your experience.

Feel free to e-mail (in profile). Started by trying to build tools for recruiters and interviewing recruiters for customer feedback. Found a good fit with a recruiter who placed my whole NY team before our startup got acquired and he offered me a consultant gig. Really enjoying it so far. Great way to monetize a mix of engineering career consulting + staying on top of startup trends.

Interesting! Do you feel like as you get further and further from having done the actual work (that you're helping recruit for) that you'll still be as effective?

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#469

Post by stcredzero »

ryandrake wrote: post #418
stcredzero wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But most of the actual work out there is either 1. plumbing some data from one layer in the stack to the other (typical CRUD app) or 2. writing glue code to integrate one vendor's middleware to another vendor's middleware, or 3. fixing bugs in some 10 year old legacy application, or if you're lucky, 4. getting an application to work barely well enough in order to ship it on time. And most of a lifeguard's job is sitt…

I'm not sure the lifeguard analogy is apt. There are plenty of programming jobs where algorithm knowledge is helpful but not strictly necessary. You and I might not find ourselves in them but they exist. It's more about testing the range of skills that will actually be applied. To toss in another incomplete analogy: If you're interviewing someone to build you a deck in your backyard don't spend 90% of the interview t…

I'm not sure the lifeguard analogy is apt. There are plenty of programming jobs where algorithm knowledge is helpful but not strictly necessary.

I think a lot of the above analogy mismatch and "not strictly necessary"-ness is because an application slowdown is much less severe than a drowning death. But if you account for that difference, it is very apt.

If you're interviewing someone to build you a deck in your backyard don't spend 90% of the interview time asking him how he'd chop down trees for wood and manufacture the nails. You probably also don't need to ask him his opinion on the local building height restrictions or if he knows how to install an attic fan. You want to know that he can build a deck.

But "how he'd chop down trees for wood and manufacture the nails" isn't apt at all! As a programmer, understanding algorithms is much more like 1st principles knowledge behind understanding building materials. Your contractor needs to know the structural properties of different kinds of wood, the properties of the soil in your backyard, and some basic chemistry/engineering/physics. Otherwise, she might put the wrong materials together and invite galvanic corrosion, or use the wrong materials in the wrong context and invite premature wood rot. You'd want a carpenter to understand wood harvesting, milling, and treatment in how it effects the properties of wood. Could you get by most of the time, just knowing how to saw boards and drive nails with power equipment? Sure. But someone with the right knowledge is going to avoid the unlikely but very costly pitfall and save her customer thousands of dollars otherwise.

You want to know that he can build a deck.

On time and under budget. She's more likely to do that if she's armed beforehand with certain experience and 1st principles knowledge. All things being equal, the contractors who built decks on time and under budget had good trades instruction or otherwise had the right experience and/or 1st principles knowledge. Also, if you look at the longevity and long term structural integrity of deck projects, you will likely find such a correlation.

(Also, it would be a really good idea if your contractor had a knowledge of local building regulations concerning the deck.)

Re: Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters

#470

Post by metaphorm »

munificent wrote: post #248
metaphorm wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the problem with the way Google interviews is that, despite it being heavily standardized, it is not sensitive to non-algorithmic skills and talents that interviewees have. It will _only_ pass candidates who are unusually good at algorithm puzzles, on whiteboards, under time pressure.

> it is not sensitive to non-algorithmic skills and talents that interviewees have. I work at Google and do interviews (though I don't enjoy them). We do ask questions around domain expertise, software design, etc. It's not all just coding and algorithms. A good question: 1. Has a low enough floor that a poor candidate can still make some progress and not feel like they are doing poorly and get stressed out. 2. Has a…

you're missing something important about my comment. the issue isn't the hair-splitting difference between what you call "puzzle or trick questions" and what you describe as "a good question" (with your eight criteria). the issue is that Google style interviews ONLY ONLY ONLY ask coding questions in a pressure cooker environment.

I've interviewed at Google and the interview experience was sufficient to convince me that I'm not a culture fit. Maybe that was the point. I tend to thrive in work environments where my "soft skills" matter more. Seems like that's not even on the radar at Google.

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