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Preface: For the benefit of other TLUGers, I'd like to share the interview experience I had at Google over the summer for a product manager position. While the system is the same, details will likely be different for other positions, such as developer, where there currently is a shortage. I have heard that in Japan there are too many product managers and not enough developers; that one reason for this is that it is hard to find developers in Japan who want to work for Google, who speak English well enough to pass the American interviews, and who majored in CS at school, all of which are required.

Anyway, recently I was asked by Google to fill out a questionnaire on my experience. Apparently they are finally trying to improve their notorious process. For this purpose, I sat down to compose my feedback, and after taking the time to do that, I thought it would be beneficial to post a slightly edited version here. Feel free to comment.

Throughout the whole process, one gets a feeling that the interviewers are too busy with their regular job and really don't want to interview you. You are just a bother to them. So don't be surprised if they cancel your interview at the last minute, call you 40 minutes late, start your video-conference 15 minutes late, or otherwise act like you are interrupting their work and are just a bother to them. This is rather demoralizing to a candidate.

Additionally, HR asks you to do an incredible amount of preparation for your interview (for Product Manager at least), analyzing Google products, the competitive landscape, proposing your own products, etc. Yet after you do this preparation, your interviewer doesn't have enough time to really listen to your analysis or your opinions in any great detail, and FURTHERMORE, they won't give you a way to contact them to forward them your analysis, or any follow-up, because they are simply too busy and NOT INTERESTED - your whole interview was a distraction to them from the beginning and it shows. This was especially frustrating as a candidate, to do all this research and preparation (as suggested by HR, but also is good interviewing common sense) and not really even be given the chance to express it...

Let me add a note here: many people advise against criticizing an employer during an interview. But Google interviewers seem to particularly want you to tell them what you think Google is doing wrong. I do not believe this to be a trap (as one of my mentors and some other people have thought). I believe that it is a form of research that they use to get free consulting from job applicants. This is a great deal really; get your job applicants to spend 20-30+ hours researching your products for you, as part of the interview process.

Japanese HR is extremely friendly but almost useless. They can't tell you anything real about the interview process. Simple questions like "how many rounds of interviews?" or "when will my next round of interviews be?" are a mystery to them. ZERO feedback is provided in response to any interview, just some cryptic mention about average scores. What happened to some honest answers? You won't get any from a Google recruiter, instead they will just hide behind some wall of vagueness.

Speaking of Google recruiters, why do so many of them try to poach people off of LinkedIn and Facebook? I am tired of being linked to by Google recruiters who I have never met. Not only that, they don't seem to be aware of the fact that I am already interviewing with Google (at the time); this reflects rather poorly on Google's recruitment process. I heard from friends at Google that some of them had been contacted by Google recruiters even after they were working at Google; this is how messed up the system is. That doesn't make me feel that much better. The fact of the matter is, many Google recruiters have this sense of desperation.. desperately trying to link to as many people as they can on Facebook and LinkedIn, even people who they have never met or only talked to once. Maybe Google should build a search application that allows Google recruiters to search the HR database to know who is already being interviewed or already working at Google? Now that's an idea!

The relationship between Japan and the US is also kinda crazy. Many US-based interviewers ask irrelevant questions, and have no idea what is happening in the Japan office. Japan HR has no idea what is going on and often say one thing only to find out that US HR later tells them something else, so what they told you is wrong. Japan doesn't have most of the benefits that the US has either, so really you have worse of all worlds - #2 position in Japanese search, almost no benefits, and all important decisions have to be filtered through the US, which really is too busy to care about you and would rather have you just go away. Let me add here that some of the points for which I rated my recruiter low I think probably were not his fault but rather he was just a pawn bowing down to his fickle American counterparts who would tell him one thing and then do another.

Throughout the whole process, the candidate can't help but get a tremendous feeling of being jerked around. This is the best way I can describe it. It is somewhat a feeling of helplessness, where you are stuck in this big machine and have no way out and just have to wait and endure a process with no ending known in advance. I've heard from other friends working at Google (or that interviewed at Google) that they also felt this way, just to stick it out and after it's over and you get your job, you can forget about it. Maybe that's mildly comforting.

Enduring 7 interviews (9 counting HR) over a 10-12 week period also is rather unacceptable. Nowhere throughout the interview process can anyone tell you when it will end. Or if they try to be nice and give you an estimate, it will be wildly off. Nobody has any idea of what is going on or how long it will take. Interviews take weeks to be scheduled, then cancelled the day before. This enhances the candidate's feeling of being jerked around. And after all that, your final answer? "Your average scores are not high enough." After 7 interviews and nearly 3 months, that's it?

Hope you find this interesting. Perhaps you may be tempted to write off my feedback as someone who is just upset that they did not get a job offer at Google. You can think that, if you like. But I would disagree. I have never experienced such a feeling of being jerked around through an interview process as at Google. The outcome no longer matters, for there are plenty of other employers besides Google, and I'm not really sure that I would want to work at Google Japan anymore anyway after seeing more of the inside. Something is really wrong here. My issues are very legitimate, I feel. Other companies like Amazon don't seem to have the kinds of problems that Google does. Google makes great products, but their interview system is broken.

As a final note, recently my friend forwarded me this article: http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9800095-7.html - What do 16,000 people do at Google? It says Google added 2130 workers in one quarter. Figure each of those workers goes through an average of 6 interviews. That's 12780 interviews just for the people who were hired. What about the people who weren't hired? I'm not sure how to estimate that, but let's say 1 in 10 people get offers and join, and that on average people who aren't hired only get 4 interviews, since they don't make it through the whole process. That would mean 19170 people were interviewed and not hired, and 76680 interviews were given?! Okay something must be a bit off, but just think of all the interviews that are going on.. Maybe that is why candidates are looked at as a nuisance to a busy interviewer's schedule..

[tlug] FWIW: Google Japan Interview Experience