What It Takes To Work At Google, Mountain View Paper Options

[swainzy]

MOUNTAIN VIEW - Have you ever made a profit from a catering business or dog walking? Do you prefer to work alone or in groups? Have you ever set a world record in anything? The right answers could help get you a job at Google. Google has always wanted to hire people with straight-A report cards and double 800s on their SATs. Now, like an Ivy League school, it is starting to look for more well-rounded candidates, like those who have published books or started their own clubs.

Link

[sanity]

Our friend's brother has recently started work there but so far he's remained pretty tight lipped. Would love to know more though.

[JohnMu]

I bet lots of companies have obscure ideas about general applications. Many companies here in Switzerland do handwriting analysis, I don't know if they do that elsewhere as much -- in my opinion it's just as strange .

It would be fun to be able to take the questionnaire and get your "Googlerank" just for the heck of it.

John

[gabs]

The week before xmas I went to the google london office and the amount of people for interview was amazing... (all sorts of people, not many in suits)

People thought I was there for a job..

[bragadocchio]

Omid Kordestani from Google gave a presentation (scroll down to the bottom for the video) at Stanford Graduate School of Business back in September. Most of the presentation isn't really about Google, but some of it is. He mentions one of the "tests" that they use, and have from the very early days, the airport test.

It basically goes like this. Imagine that the person you are interviewing gets hired, and that you have to go on a business trip with him or her, flying to your destination. Now imagine being at the airport with the potential employee, only to discover that the flight has been delayed four hours. Would you want to be stuck waiting at the airport with this person for four hours while waiting for a plane?

One tidbit that I thought was interesting from this video was that back in September, 2006, approximately half of Google's employees were female, and Omid Kordestani was pretty proud of those numbers. (I'm not sure that I've seen much of the breakdown of the employee demographics at Google.)

Stanford did a series of videos in May of 2002 with Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, which covers a lot of issues involving corporate culture, and the business issues behind Google. It's at:

http://edcorner.stanford.edu/authorMateria...html?author=150

A couple of those are:

Hiring: What Attributes Do You Look For?

(Larry defines the airport test in that segment.)

Recruiting and Hiring
In 2002, they were receiving over 1000 resumes a day. Some interesting insights to reference checks in this section.

[Wit]

It's funny. I can spend hours with ANYONE on an airport. Provided I'm allowed to go on a tax-free shopping spree Does that make me G material?

[swainzy]

This article is from 2005 but states:

"Google hires nine new workers a day. In less than two years, the number of employees has more than tripled to 4,989. Every month, aspiring workers deluge the popular Mountain View search engine with up to 150,000 resumes, equivalent to a stack of paper at least 50 feet high. And the firm claims to read each and every one.

Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, has called hiring one of his firm's biggest challenges. If unable to find enough top-notch workers, he says the company's rapid growth could be hamstrung.

Here is a Google recruitment video.

This post has been edited by swainzy: Jan 5 2007, 08:48 PM

[send2paul]

“Last week we hired six people who had below a 3.0 GPA.”

That's nice

[trevHCS]

Erm, what's a 3.0GPA?


As for their recruiting - I was always a bit worried that they filled the place with very brainy people, but no real people, as in the ones who didn't spend their entire Summer holidays doing complex maths.

Every company needs smart people, but they also need people who understand how the general population think since most of us end users really don't think like a computer and don't understand thus they were always in danger of essentially losing the plot.

Plus considering they've got all the "smart" people in a few locations, isn't there a bit of a national security problem in that it only takes a terrorist organisation to hold them hostage in the main Google locations and the world is suddenly rather, well, thick.


With regards jobs, do you think having the ability to spend 30 minutes staring and analysing at a crack in a wall without getting bored would qualify me for the debugging dept., and the "not being annoying at the airport" criteria? Admittidly the technique of staring at the code for ages is unusual, but it sounds like they want unusual people. Just not sure if mentioning this ability is due to a brain-design "undocumented feature" would get me closer to the Google chair and coffee machine...? No, this is not Trev's excuse for day-dreaming in the office.

Trev

[joedolson]

Erm, what's a 3.0GPA?

Grade Point Average:

An acronym for grade point average, a snapshot of your overall academic performance. In most schools, an A equals four points, a B is three points, a C is two points, a D is one point, and an F equals no points.

[lee.n3o]

Hey I like multi-coloured balls and I reckon I'd be quite fun to sit with in an airport for a few hours... I can drivel on about the dark side of the force, why I'm not into open source, how ...urm.... well thats enough for now.

So WHERE DO I SIGN... Comon me, me, me, me.... I wanna work for Google

[A.N.Onym]

Any online version of it? I'd like to take it as as a test

[swainzy]

Google Labs Aptitude Test

[Karl Ribas]

Lol...

Plus considering they've got all the "smart" people in a few locations, isn't there a bit of a national security problem in that it only takes a terrorist organisation to hold them hostage in the main Google locations and the world is suddenly rather, well, thick.

I'm not sure why, but I had a pretty good laugh at that. I'm sick, I know it.

I just looked at the "Google Labs Aptitude Test"... wow. My head hurts.

[A.N.Onym]

Thanks for the link, Donna.

It appears I could take this test, if I were just out of the math class. Unfortunately, years have passed and my math mind isn't as sharp as before. That being said, the tricky questions were answered correctly

[JohnMu]

Off Topic

Looking at http://finance.google.com/finance?q=goog I see a little link coming in straight to this forum in the "blog" section (screenshot) . Does that mean our forum posts could end up over there? Neato

[trevHCS]

Maybe they just liked the fact that we called them smart people...

Trev

This post has been edited by trevHCS: Jan 10 2007, 03:46 PM

[swainzy]

John,
I saw that yesterday when I googled my name (for kicks) but I could not find it on the page. Now is under Karl Ribas but I still don't see it on the link above, only on your screen shot. I could'nt figure it out.