Working for the man, part 1
Among the first things I’ve been imprinted with at Google, is that Google is a very secretive company. I’m not allowed to tell almost anything about [the inside of] Google. I don’t even know how I could ever post anything mentioning the word Google on my public blog, but given that I’ve read public blogs of other googlers, I imagine that just blogging may not be a reason for immediate firing. Just for caution, I’ll try to restrict myself to saying only positive things about Google (and this does not imply that there are other-than-positive things to be said about Google) — self-censorship is an interesting attitude.
First, I should stress that there are plenty of great things about Google — the problem is that many of these are already well known (not to mention the food).
My first contact with the inside of Google was through the interviewing process (when I was recruited). I can tell that I was positively impressed by the interviewing process: most of the questions/tasks were relevant and challenging, and the people conducting the interviews seemed compentent and smart. I also had the impression that they were looking for objective hints in order to evaluate my skills (as oposed to subjective judgement). As a simple outline of the interviewing process, I started by sending my Resume (CV) by email to Google. After this followed two phone-screens, and afterwards, four in-person interviews.
What can I say, I’d wish to become as good an interviewer as some of the persons who interviewed me. But there is one small thing that keeps me from being completly extatic about the recruiting process at Google: about a year and a half ago, I sent for the first time my resume to Google. It was not exactly the same resume, and the layout was different, but it was essentially describing the same person (me).
Back then, I got back the standard refusal email, we have no oppenings matching your skills at this time or something like this, but I think that the real message of the email was: based on your resume, we decided it’s not worth proceeding to the phone-screen phase. Meaning that the recruiter was so confident that I’m a bad candidate, that it didn’t warrant a phone-screen test.
I don’t really believe that I improved that much between then and now. I rather think that I experienced a glimpse in the recruitment process: either Google hired a bad candidate now, or the recruiter hurried to drop my resume back then — I hope it’s the last. Of course, Google (like some other companies) is more concerned about avoiding a bad hire than about losing a good candidate — or in other words, a false-negative is preferred to a false-positive. From the employer perspective, it’s preferrable to err on the side of caution; what I’m surprised is that my resume was judged so bad that I didn’t even make it to the phone-screen.
PS: if you’re interested in a software development position at Google, you may be better-off sending your resume (CV) to a Google employee you know for them to refer you, rather than doing a spontaneous application. And second, Google is hiring in (extended) Europe and Russia, so don’t be put-off if you don’t live in the US.