Recruiting people at Google: On average each year, Google receives two million job applications while hiring only a few thousand. Had I known this early, I would not have applied.
Once, Google used to interview recruiters with questions like: “How many golf balls can a bus hold?”. This company once rented a billboard on the highway to post the question “First 10-digit prime number in a consecutive digit sequence of e?” to find good candidates.
That campaign cost a lot of money and recruited exactly 0 suitable people.
Fortunately, then Google as well as many technology companies have eliminated the quiz question. They realized its effectiveness was not high. Assuming that a “Sherlock Homes” candidate can solve the puzzle, there is no guarantee that he will be successful at the company. Because in addition to logical thinking, IQ, employees also need EQ, presentation skills, teamwork and many other skills.
Instead of tough questions, Google uses the General cognitive ability (GCA) interview to assess the candidate’s problem-solving ability, management skills, and working style.
They will ask questions about hypothetical situations like, suppose you are in charge of opening a training center in Vietnam, which city would you choose, what is the plan.
If you have ever opened a training center for a very successful old company. So immediately, you give the answer “should open a training center in Masteri thao dien for rent“. And that’s the typical low score answer.
Why? The answer does not help the interviewer to assess any competence. They score candidates’ answers according to the following criteria: Understand the question, have a preparation strategy; ability to identify possible solutions; the ability to choose the optimal solution; the ability to communicate and persuade others about the proposed solution. The correct answer is less important than how you synthesize, analyze information and approach to come up with a solution.
So, to get a good answer, after hearing the question, pause for a moment, don’t rush to jump right into the solution. The question above is too broad and less informative. Ask questions to collect more data, for example, what is the goal of opening the center, how much is the budget, who is the target audience, high school students or students, working people. ..
For employers, the solution is less important than how you think in the process of making the solution. So, share your thought process. Show your listeners that you always have more than one way to solve a problem. The interviewer also wants to assess the candidate’s ability to choose the optimal decision, show this in the answer. For example, after surveying, I found that there are two suitable places, Ho Chi Minh City and Quy Nhon. I propose to choose Quy Nhon because of its good technology investment support policy, a technology village near a beautiful beach, which attracts many southern students.
This is just one of five interview rounds at Google, including: Human resources talk with candidates over the phone to assess the suitability, expectations of both sides, explain the recruitment process, about 30 minutes; Interview for preliminary assessment of the candidate’s expertise and knowledge in the applied field, about 45 minutes; A group of people in the position you are applying for will interview, evaluate in-depth details about your knowledge and experience related to the job to ensure that the candidate has the ability to meet the job, about 75 minutes. ; GCA interview round as I described above – Google’s most typical, about 45 minutes; And finally, there is an interview round to test leadership capacity, personality, and cultural compatibility, about 45 minutes.
If you pass the above steps, a package of candidate documents including CV, questions and answers of each interview round, evaluation of each recruitment participant will be sent to the Recruitment Council for consideration. .
From here, candidates do not have to do anything, just relax or anxiously wait for the results. The rest is up to Google.
The odds of getting into Google are 25 times higher than Harvard, Yale or Princeton, according to Laszlo Bock, Google’s senior vice president of human resources. The company’s recruitment philosophy is to find decent people doing the right thing, with a mission to “organize the world’s information, make it useful and accessible to everyone”.
The world has so many problems to solve for the better that they are not always obvious. Therefore, Google highly values the ability to solve problems, manage in ambiguous situations. This factor is followed throughout the recruitment process. More specifically, they want to find “Googleyness”: People who are able to thrive and adapt in a fast-paced, changing environment, problem solvers in ambiguous situations, who are always challenging. status awareness.
For example, when the world accepted Yahoo’s search engine as the best, the people at Google believed there was a more efficient way to search, and they found a way to do it. The company also looks for people who always put customers first, care about people and do what is right.
Google highly values people with leadership qualities no matter what position they apply for, who listen to both praise and criticism to develop themselves. The ability to organize group activities, learn new things and share with others is also a manifestation of leadership qualities.
You may think, Google is so big, good mode, attractive working environment to do so. In fact, they applied this strategy from the very beginning, when the remuneration was still very low compared to large companies. Thanks to that, the company has recruited many important personnel to help them grow as today.
According to Laszlo Bock, in pursuit of its philosophy, Google sets very high recruitment standards and never compromises. The company is willing to wait a long time to recruit the right candidate, not rush to accept it just because it is in dire need of people.
After more than a month, going through five rounds of interviews, I received a “job offer” last September. For me, it was a blessing, proving that in addition to recruiting talented people, Google also recruited me – an ordinary Vietnamese person who shares love.
I share my interview experience at Google to help people better understand the recruitment strategy of the company and technology firms. Thereby, businesses can refer to the strategy of recruiting the right people from the very beginning. Universities will focus more on training soft skills such as presentations, interviews, and teamwork for students.
For young people, in addition to professional studies, they also need the right personal development strategy. Curiosity and passion are always good qualities that professional recruiters look for. If you’re not great yet, be a better version of yourself than you were yesterday.
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