Google, Microsoft In Epic Hiring War 235
natecochrane writes "Looking for a new job? Then Google and Microsoft have 6200 roles globally this quarter up for grabs, the first salvos in a costly war for talent. Google alone will hire 6200 engineers, executives and sales staff this year — its biggest intake ever. This story details where the biggest bucks and most fun jobs are to be had and how you can apply for them. There's even a job for an Xbox PR person — fancy being paid to play with toys all day?"
Re:numbers?? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And what happens is this (Score:5, Informative)
Hiring is hard, trust me, I've done it for years. However, I claim that silly little tests and so on are just that: silly. I have turned down senior management positions at companies that think they have some sort of Golden Test that candidates need to pass.
Google doesn't have a "Golden Test". I'll describe Google's process below.
There are really only two things to evaluate: (1) Is the candidate smart? and (2) Can the candidate be effective in the position?
Yes, those are the things you need to figure out, but no, neither of them is very easy to evaluate. Especially not when you set your standards as high as Google does. Your approach to evaluating intelligence is especially flawed -- there are lots of people who can talk the talk, but can't perform when given problems to solve.
Here's Google's interview process (the engineering interview process; I don't know about sales, etc.):
The first step is optional, and depends on various things. It's a phone screen. Usually about one hour long, it involves a series of computer science/algorithms questions, and sometimes includes some coding as well, using a shared editor over the web. This screen has nothing to do with the hire/no-hire decision, it's just a filter to verify that it's not a waste of time to bring the candidate on-site.
The on-site interview takes five hours, each hour an interview by another engineer. One of the five "interviews" is lunch, and it has no effect on the hire/no-hire decision; it's mostly an opportunity for the candidates to ask questions and to talk about Google culture.
Each of the actual interviewers gets to ask whatever questions they like (though with some guidance from HR about what kinds of questions need to be avoided). However, there are some recommendations: Questions should be focused on technical topics that evaluate candidates' problem-solving and coding skills, and at least one coding problem must be included. Google interviewers pay no attention to what you have done in the past, except maybe to break the ice and perhaps as a source of technical topics to discuss. Mostly, they ask serious CS questions, requiring you to design (and implement) algorithms to solve problems, and to evaluate the real and asymptotic efficiency of your solutions, and to discuss issues related to scaling your solutions to Google scale (meaning really, really huge).
Afterwards, each interviewer writes up their thoughts, complete with the code you wrote. They do comment a bit on cultural fit, but unless you're really just impossible to work with (e.g. extremely arrogant) that's unlikely to be a problem. Mostly they discuss your problem-solving approach and ability and your coding ability. Each interviewer also rates you on a scale from 0 to 4, and gives their hire/no-hire recommendation. Google's process minimizes and discourages communication between the interviewers, because they don't want one interviewer with an excessively negative or positive opinion to affect the other interviewers' opinions.
After all reviewers have submitted their feedback, the data is compiled and delivered to a hiring committee (again a group of engineers, perhaps with a manager or two, but mostly engineers -- and Google managers are all engineers, too). Based on that information they have to come to a consensus decision to hire, reject or request more interviews (the latter is rare). Candidates who are rejected are not allowed to interview again for six months.
In rare cases, the decision of this hiring committee may be overridden by another, higher-level committee.
At all levels, the direction given to interviewers and committee members is to lean towards rejection. False negatives are perceived as less painful to the company than false positives, so the process is negatively biased.
Is the system perfect? Clearly not, and Google recognizes that and is constantly looking for ways to improve it. I'm not sure how muc