Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Interviewing at Google

I've now been at Google for, wow, 11 whole months! I thought I'd write down some stuff I really wish I'd known when I started, and especially some things about the interview process. Disclaimer: This is my personal blog, and these views are mine, and not those of my employer.

Don't worry too much about what to wear when interviewing at Google. If you wear a really sharp suit people will wonder why you own a really sharp suit rather than one you obviously keep just for formal occasions and hardly ever wear, but other than that it doesn't really matter. Don't go too far the other way, though. At least make sure you shower and put on something clean, as you'll be stuck in a small airless room all day for your onsites and if all that people remember about you when they come to write up their feedback is the smell that's a bad thing. You'll get irony points for turning up in a Yahoo! or Microsoft T-shirt, though.

Be nice to everyone. Be especially nice to the recruiting coordinator who's looking after you. And if you need a break for the bathroom or just need to get the hell out of that small airless room for a few minutes or whatever, don't be afraid to ask. One of your interviewers would probably quite like to go for a stroll outside rather than be sitting in a small room anyway. Similiarly, if you have a phone screen which turns out to be at a bad time or you're suffering from lack of sleep and can't think straight, don't be afraid to ask to reschedule. We want everyone to give us the best impression they can when they're interviewed, and if you don't think you can do yourself justice for some reason or another tell us.

Don't worry too much about getting 100% right or 100% wrong answers. If you don't know the answer to a question, try to derive it from what you do know. Theorise and hypothesise and think aloud. People who answer every question straight out are few and far between, and that actually tells an interviewer less about you than listening to you reasoning. Be interested in everything, or at least pretend to be.

Don't be arrogant or cocky. Leave your ego at the door. Arrogance and cockiness will kill you when it comes to assessing your culture fit. We're looking to hire Obi-Wan, not Luke, and we don't care if you used to bulls-eye womprats in Beggar's Canyon in your T-16.

Do come up with interesting questions to ask us, but do be savvy enough to know that questions like "Please give me a detailed description of your production infrastructure" and "How many servers do you guys have exactly, anyway?" aren't questions we can answer. Please don't ask us "How have I done? Will I get hired?" or "How much will you pay me anyway?". We really can't answer that one.

Don't make assumptions about how you've done unless you, say, ran screaming from the building halfway through your second interview of the day (and hey, you probably wouldn't be the first to do that).

Do poke your recruiter gently for an update if you haven't heard anything after a week or so. But be polite - they're insanely busy. Generally when they have information to pass on to you about your application they'll do one of the following:

• Call or email you immediately (call if it's good news, email if it's bad)
• Go away skiing for a week

Do understand that while the hiring process is tedious and frustrating, it's tedious and frustrating for just about everyone. It does mean that if you get through it alive you get to work with lots of insanely smart people, and it's worth it in the end. I promise.