The Google Resume (13 page)

Following Up with Your Recruiter

Although recruiters should be proactive in updating you about your status, they deal with many candidates and sometimes people fall through the cracks. If you haven’t heard from your recruiter (and haven’t been given a timeline), feel free to e-mail your recruiter after about one week to check in. A simple note like this will suffice:

If there’s no response, you can e-mail them after another three working days with a short note like:

Of course, if at any time your interviewer updates you with a timeline, that timeline completely supersedes this schedule. That is, if your interviewer says you’ll hear back in two weeks, you must wait those two weeks, as painful as it is.

Finally, remember the following: companies will always tell you if you’re rejected. Always (or at least I’ve never heard of a company that doesn’t). If your recruiter doesn’t respond, there can be many reasons for it—but being rejected is not one of them.

Contacting Your References

Before providing the contact information for your references, make sure to check with your references. Confirm with them again that they can be a reference, and use this opportunity to tell them a bit about the position and what skills you’d like them to highlight. References hate to be caught off guard.

Dealing with Rejection

For each offer a company gives out, a company rejects an average of 5 to 10 candidates. That means that, as a candidate, you can expect to get rejected—a lot. It may mean that the position was a poor match, it may mean that you didn’t prepare adequately, or it may mean that you just had bad luck.

In the unfortunate case that a company does not extend you an offer, the important thing at this point is to not burn bridges. Companies will usually let you reapply within six months to a year, and a positive relationship with your recruiter is critical for doing this. Try to offer a polite response like, “OK, well I’m sorry to hear that, but thank you very much for the opportunity. I really enjoyed the experience, and I hope to be able to revisit it down the road.”

You can also try asking for feedback. It’s unlikely that they’ll give you feedback, but you will increase your chances if you focus your question in a positive way. That is, the question “Do you have any suggestions as to what I should focus on in my future preparation?” is more likely to get a response than “What did I do poorly?”

Your Questions Answered

Run for the Hills

Too Much Information or Just Enough?

Playing Hard to Get

Additional Resources

Please visit
www.careercup.com
for additional preparation resources, and the preparation grid template.

“You know how I interview electrical contractors?” Colin Jaques of Canzam Electric said to me over margaritas one day. “I give them a pipe and I tell them to bend it.” Suddenly I pictured a Hulk Hogan–type man heaving as he bends a pipe with his bare hands.
He can’t be serious?

“No, no. It’s not about strength.” Colin reassured me. “It’s about how they answer. Do they ask where you want it bent and at what angle, or do they just bend it? You see, we can’t have contractors running around bending things at random with no idea what you—or the client—wants.” He had a point.

Like this interview question, many interview questions are not what they seem. Too many candidates stress getting the right answer, as though there’s always one, single correct answer (in which case, we’d just give candidates tests—think of the time we’d save!). Rather, interview questions are about the process one takes. Do you check your assumptions? Do you think through all possible cases? How do you break down the problem?

General Advice

Erin, a recruiting coordinator from Microsoft, reminds us that “whatever you’re asked, you’re always answering the question, ‘Why should we hire you?’ It is the thesis of your interview.”

As you’re answering questions, think about your personal thesis. What do you bring to the table? Is it your creativity? Your versatile skill set? Your communication and social skills? While it’s tempting to say “yes!” to all of these, you’ll more effectively communicate your value-add by focusing on just a couple of core skills.

Finally, remember to always be honest—and that a lie by omission is still a lie. If you’ve ever worked with a dishonest coworker, you’d understand why this is such a deal breaker: they’ll take credit for your work, deny their own mistakes, and even possibly get the company in legal trouble. It’s just not worth the risk. However, candidates who admit potentially detrimental information are often given a “plus” that more than compensates for the information they reveal. It shows you to be honest—a plus in and of itself—but it also lends credibility to all the great things you say about yourself.

Communication

While some advice is topic specific, communication skills are more universal. Your communication style will both directly and indirectly impact your performance, so keep this advice in mind:

• Don’t interrupt.
  Listen fully to your interviewer’s question. Interruptions can not only be offensive but suggest poor communication skills. You may also not understand the actual question if you only listen to half of it.
  
• Clarify ambiguity.
  Many candidates feel so pressured to blurt out an answer immediately that they start stumbling through an answer. Pretty soon, they wind up at the interview equivalent of a dark dead-end alley. Imagine, for example, you’re given an interview question like, “We’re considering launching a new product in China. How would you evaluate this decision?” Whether the product is software, a service, or some other variant can drastically change the response. You may assume one, whereas your interviewer assumed another. When you get a question, think through anything that’s ambiguous and clarify it. Not only will this help you give a better answer, but your interviewer might be intentionally testing whether you clarify ambiguity. This is an important skill, both on the job and in interviews!
  
• Talk out loud.
  Because interview questions are really about your approach, not getting the right answer, solving questions out loud is very important. Taking a few moments to think silently is fine, but you should verbalize most of your thought process. This has an added benefit of enabling your interviewer to steer you in the right direction periodically, enabling you to arrive at an optimal answer more quickly.
  

When You Get Something Wrong

Once, I saw the mythical “perfect” candidate. I wasn’t even scheduled to interview him. Google had flown me out to do “batch” interviews for their new Moscow office; eight interviewers, four interviews each per day, five days. I was on one of my rare breaks when I got called in for a last-minute interview. His interviewers, who rarely have a chance to complete more than one of their five “stock” questions, had run out of questions. So they rounded up the rest of us and brought us in. Even my toughest question was no match for him. He whizzed through my questions and we ended his interview day two hours early.

That was the first and last time I saw such a candidate. This means that everyone else—all 150 candidates I’ve interviewed plus the 1,500 interview packets I’ve reviewed—made mistakes.

So if you make a mistake, relax. Admit the mistake—your interviewer probably noticed it anyway—and don’t be too embarrassed about it. You’ll just fit in with all of us—everyone who is not a crazy Russian interviewee.

Acing the Standard Questions

While questions can vary wildly across teams, companies, and positions, there are a few questions that you can be reasonably assured to get. Love ’em or hate ’em, you’re bound to get a few of these.

Why Do You Want to Work Here?

As our Microsoft recruiting coordinator, Erin, said, the thesis of your interview, and therefore this question, is why the company should hire you. She goes on to say that you should “understand what motivates you and let that shine through—unless it’s money.”

The key to this question is answering it in a way that boosts your chances. It’s all about your motivations and skills. Think about the skill sets for the job or the area you’ll be working in. What excites you? Do you love working with people? Are you fascinated by tough algorithm problems? Do you want to make an impact? Try to keep your answers as specific as possible to the company or even the team. You might even consider mixing in some comments about your background and how the company is a great match for that.

This is also a great time to flex all the research you’ve done about the company.

Here’s a great response for an engineering position at Google:

There are two major reasons. First, I’m really interested in the design of large systems. I’ve taken a lot of courses on distributing systems and explored this for my senior project. I feel Google is the best place to deepen my knowledge in this area. But, second, and perhaps more importantly, I really believe that the most important thing for any job is to make sure that you’re learning a lot. Whereas at many companies you really learn only about your own team, at Google, employees seem to be encouraged to transfer teams, to share knowledge across teams, to do tech talks about their team’s architecture,
etc.
I can’t think of any place where I’d learn more than at Google.

In providing this response, the candidate has shown himself to be excited about learning, to have done research on the company, and to be knowledgeable about a core skill set.

Why Are You Leaving Your Job?

One of my standard opening questions was, “What brings you here today?” A candidate could answer many ways. They could explain why they were leaving their current job. They could tell me why the new position was exciting to them. Or the more literal candidate could joke and say “a car,” as one candidate, in fact, did.

One unfortunate candidate took the opportunity to rant about her current position. Her work was boring and tedious. Her teammates were too negative and critical. Her boss was sexist and wouldn’t promote her. She wasn’t learning enough. On and on and on. I dutifully noted her reasons and progressed with more technical questions, which she breezed through. When we discussed her interviewing feedback later, we discovered that all her interviewers noted the same negativity.

Perhaps she had an unfortunate position with her team, but her willingness to flaunt such hostility showed a lack of professionalism and suggested a general negative demeanor. We rejected her—she could have been toxic to the culture.

No matter how bad your situation is, stay positive. Focus on what you’re excited about doing at this new position:

My current position has been great in certain ways. It’s taught me a lot about communication, negotiations, and how to manage many clients at once. However, new client acquisition is so highly prioritized at my company that I don’t have the opportunity to develop more lasting relationships with clients. I’m looking for an opportunity where I can do this.

Assuming that the new position matches this requirement, this would be an excellent response.

Why Should We Hire You?

This question can be stated in many alternative or related ways: “What skills do you think you bring?,” “What do you see your role here being?,” and so on. Your response to this question should focus on a few core (related) skills or attributes that you think you offer. Aim for exactly three; fewer than three seems weak, more than three loses the interviewer’s focus. Back up each with a short amount of evidence.

Example:
“I understand that one of your company’s core issues has been improving the server uptime. I think I could make a large impact on this issue, for three reasons. First, my current position has offered me a deep background in efficient server programming, which would be valuable on this project. Second, I recognize that this problem requires working with several teams simultaneously, and I have been playing this intermediary role in my current position. Third, I’ve spent my spare time profiling various open source projects for their memory usage, and this experience has exposed me to a variety of tools and techniques for optimization.”

Where Do You See Yourself in Five Years?

OK, I know I said to always be honest, but this may be one case where you need to give a little white lie. Even if you don’t see yourself at the company for any more than a couple of years, companies want to know that they’re making a good investment in you.

Your answer to this question should be a concrete, achievable goal for where you could be (at the same company) in five years, along with a specific path for how you’d get there. If you aim too high, then the interviewer might feel that the company isn’t the right fit for you. If you aim too low, then the interviewer might see you as lacking ambition. You need to get it just right:

While I’m flexible to where the best opportunity to learn and grow is, I hope to take on a new set of responsibilities. I believe that I have the work ethic and people skills to advance into being a team manager within five years, and I think that, with the additional refinement in my technical skills that this current position would offer, I would be ideally suited for such advancement.

Be careful, though, to not raise any red flags. If your response is along the lines of, “I’ve never really liked coding, so I’d like to move up into management as soon as possible,” your ambition could hurt you.

What Are Your Strengths?

You’re probably great at many things, but you want to pick a set of three skills that are most relevant to the job and provable, while also being unique. “Intelligence,” for example, is probably very applicable as well as provable, but it’s also so common that it’s bland.

A better set of strengths are things like communication skills, energy, creativity, working well under stress, motivating others, and so on. When you state each one of these, try to cite a specific example. For instance:

I think there are three core strengths. First, I have strong communication skills that have been refined through five years of prior teaching experience. Second, I’m a very creative person. Whether it’s writing new song lyrics for my band or designing a novel interface, I’m able to find unique solutions to problems. Third, I am passionate about learning. I recently finished up a certificate in psychology at the local university, and I’m starting a new program now in art history. I may never directly apply this education, but I love learning new things.

What Are Your Weaknesses?

Many years ago, someone started a vicious rumor that your weaknesses should be strengths in disguise: “I think one of my biggest weaknesses is that I work too hard. I just don’t know when to stop!” No, really, stop.

Weaknesses should be genuine weaknesses, but not so bad that they’re damning. My personal (and honest) answer for this question when I am interviewed is the following:

I think I have three main weaknesses. First, I sometimes lack an attention to detail. While this is somewhat good in that it enables me to execute quickly, it also means that I can make careless mistakes. I have learned that I need to double or triple check important work before submitting. Second, I am a very quantitative person, and sometimes I can lose sight of the personal aspect of a decision—whom it impacts and why. I’ve learned the hard way that I need to consider who all the stakeholders are in a decision, and how they’ll react. Third, I am too critical of my own ideas and sometimes those of others. I’ve largely masked this by focusing on offering positive feedback, but I know I have some room to improve my internal reactions.

No one would claim that my weaknesses are good things, but would they disqualify me from a position? Probably not, though it does depend on the position (a motivational coach is probably out of the question for me!).

In your weaknesses, be sure to minimize them by showing how you’re working on improving them, or how you’ve managed to negate the issues (such as I do by double checking my work). Additionally, make sure you can back up your weaknesses with concrete examples. If you can’t, they probably aren’t weaknesses.

Behavioral and Résumé Questions

Behavioral questions are not just about
if
you can come up with an example of, say, your leadership, but about what the example says about you. Do you subtly influence people, gaining their support in advance of a decision? Do you try to motivate the people around you? Or are you a person who finds it easy to diffuse tense or stressful situations?

Your response to behavioral questions will suggest not only what you’ve accomplished but how you’ve accomplished it.

What They’re Looking For

Behavioral interview questions are usually structured in the form of “tell me about a time when you . . .” and may ask for examples from specific roles or projects. Interviewers are looking for four key attributes: