The Google Resume (11 page)
Authors: Gayle Laakmann McDowell
Tags: #Business & Economics, #Careers, #Job Hunting, #General
Practice Your Pitch
For each job or position, practice stating a short blurb explaining what your role was and what you accomplished. Practice two blurbs: one that would be understandable from those in your field, and one that’s understandable for nonspecialists. Stay light on the details and let the interview probe as necessary.
Pay special attention to the pitches for your most recent role, as they’re the most relevant. You could even consider recording this pitch and playing it back to yourself—do you mumble during certain parts? Friends can also be useful here. Where do they think you are weakest and strongest?
Review Your Résumé
From past projects to your foreign or programming languages, anything on your résumé is fair game. If you claim that you’re fluent in German, be prepared for a company to verify this. Tech companies are extremely international, and it’s not hard to find someone who speaks a language.
The day before your interview, pick up your résumé and explain each bullet out loud, just as you would if your interviewer asks, “What did you mean by this line?” Make sure you can explain the “what, how, and why.”
Preparation Grid
Imagine your interviewer throws you the following question: “Tell me about a time when you had a difficult situation with a coworker.” Could you answer it? Possibly. Now imagine he asks you to pick a time from a specific project that you worked on three years ago. You
know
you’ve experienced difficult times, so why is it so hard to think of one? Because that’s just not the way our brain works.
That’s why it’s so important to create a preparation grid. The preparation grid allows you to construct answers in advance to each major type of question for each project or role you’ve had. The columns represent each project, and the rows represent the most common behavioral question. If you are applying for an engineering role, the rows should instead be the common technical questions, such as the hardest bug or biggest algorithm challenge.
| Advertising Engine | Encryption | |
| Most Challenging | Balancing time vs. cost trade-off | Replacing bottom layer of system |
| What You Learned | Too much design is unrealistic | Eng. goals can conflict with mktg. |
| Influencing Someone | Senior mgmt. to refocus project | Changing triage system |
| Conflict | Bob had vested interest in status quo | Dealing with alleged experts |
| Mistake | Didn’t gather enough support in advance | Not considering all dependencies |
Fill each cell with a story that would respond to the question. When you fill in your grid, limit each story to just a few key words—this will make it easier to recall. If you do a phone interview, consider having the preparation grid in front of you.
You can download a fresh copy of the preparation grid from
www.careercup.com
.
Do Your Homework
Recruiting is expensive, and companies want to know that you’re excited about the job. They hate having a candidate reject their offer almost as much as candidates hate getting rejected. Moreover, enthusiastic candidates are more likely to work hard at a job and stay at the company. Companies look for enthusiasm, and researching the company, position, and people is one way to prove that.
Additionally, by doing this research, you’ll be able to forge stronger connections with your interviewers, learn more in the process, and sometimes even predict interview questions.
“Before my Amazon interview, I bought a Kindle,” Dave, a (now) Amazon employee, said. “It was expensive, but I needed that job badly. I also explored s3, ec2, and basically every Amazon product I could get my hands on. I was interviewing with a back-end team, but people move around—I knew that my interviewers had likely worked on other teams in the past. And I was right. Several of my interviewers had worked on Kindle and other products, and I was able to ask informed questions about their teams. Needless to say, they were impressed.”
Company
Company research starts with the basics: what do they make, how do they make it, and how do they make money? These answers sometimes appear more straightforward than they really are. Amazon, for instance, makes money by reselling products at a small profit. The interesting question is how: how are they able to sell so many things? By having some of the best distribution systems and infrastructure out there!
- News.
Stay on top of the latest news about a company, especially if you’re interviewing for a nontechnical role. The more important “current events” are to your role, the more important it is for you to know about this for your interview. Twitter can be a great source for “unfiltered” company news if you search what other users are saying. The corporate blog can also be valuable, but keep in mind that blogs are usually more of a “PR machine” than anything else. - Competitors.
Not only are competitors likely to have similar problems, but a competitor’s success is the company’s problem. Research who the competitors are, as well as why: in what ways is one company doing better than another? Why are they doing better? - Current and Former Employees.
Use Twitter, Facebook, or your friends network to reach out to current and former employees. They may be able to share with you some insights about the company, and, if you’re lucky, offer some interview tips. - Culture.
Companies with a particularly strong culture are likely to select for culture fit, and are likely to openly discuss their culture.
Zappos.com
, for instance, is known for having a very fun and quirky culture. Don’t be surprised if they ask you for a time when you broke the rules, or to invent a new type of pizza topping. Zappos’s interview questions reflect their weirdness, and they will look to see if you’re weird enough to fit in.
Interviewer Research
If you’re given the name of your interviewer, you can use this to your advantage. Find her Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn account to discover her interests, or sometimes even specific projects that she’s worked on. This will give you a clue as to what sorts of questions to ask, or how to drive the discussion.
Prepare Questions
At either the beginning or end of each question, your interviewer will give you a chance to ask questions. The quality of your questions will be a factor, whether subconsciously or consciously, in his decision. Ask open-ended questions that the person you’re interviewing with can tackle.
While some questions may come to you at the time (which is great), you can—and should—prepare 10 to 15 questions in advance. This will ensure that you have at least a few questions to ask every interviewer.
Tip:
You will usually be allowed to bring a “résumé notebook” with a pad of paper into your interview. You can jot down questions in advance there and refer to it.
Consider questions from the following three categories:
1. Genuine questions.
These are the questions you actually want to know the answers to. These questions might be:
- “How much of your day do you spend coding?” (if you’re an engineering candidate)
- “How many people are on the team? What’s the breakdown of different positions?”
- “What are the biggest issues facing the team?”
- “How does the decision process work? Who makes the final call? Who drives the decisions?”
2. Insightful questions.
These questions show that you’ve thought deeply about the issues facing the team or company. Research you do in advance will come in handy here. For example:
- “Office has been aggressively pursuing an online strategy. Is this a play at the consumer market to protect Microsoft from Google? Or is there a role in the business market as well, since that’s where Microsoft makes most of its money?”
- “Why did Google opt to use an open protocol for this product? Is it mainly a PR move, or are there actually technology advantages? What sort of limitations is Google usually concerned with when leveraging open source?”
3. Passion questions.
Passion questions are designed to show you as someone who is excited about technology, about the company, or about learning. These questions include:
- “Though I don’t have a coding background, I love learning how software is implemented. As an employee, what sorts of resources are there to do this?”
- “I’m not familiar with the technology you mentioned earlier. Could you tell me a bit about it?”
- “Thinking back to people who have had this job in the past, what separates the successful person from the unsuccessful?”
Because you are expected to do research prior to your interview, you should avoid asking questions that could have been easily looked up.
Additionally, remember that you will likely interview with HR, a manager, and teammates as well. What perspective can they each offer about the company?
Working with Your Recruiter
Your recruiter serves as your advocate during the recruiting process. He
wants
you to do well—after all, his performance evaluation is largely determined by the quantity and quality of candidates he brings in. He’s unlikely to be making the final “hire/no hire” decision, but he can be a voice that fights for you.
No one knows this better than Ravi. Ravi was applying for a position at Microsoft—his dream job. Ravi breezed through the on-campus interviews at his college and was flown out to Redmond, Washington, for five interviews with two different teams. He met with his recruiter at the end of the day, who thanked him very much for his time and scooted him out the door. He left the rainy city with no offer in hand. A week later, he started sweating—why hadn’t she called? Finally, two weeks after his interview, he learned the bad news: though he had done well, she said, neither team would be moving forward at this time. Ah, the generic words every candidate hates to hear!
Normally, that would be that. However, instead of shutting the door on him (and his dream job), she invited him to return to Seattle for another set of interviews. He flew out again, completed another five interviews, and again, days passed with no word. Finally, she called Ravi: “Neither team will be moving forward at this time, but we have a different team that would like to speak with you.” Two phone interviews later, and bam! He got the offer and went on to have the best summer of his life.
Why was Ravi special? He and his recruiter clicked, and she believed in him. She recognized that interviews are a bit random and take some practice. She was willing to give him a second—and then third—chance.
Your goal, during a recruiting process, is to build a connection with your recruiter like Ravi did. Though they may not have the hire/no hire decision, they can and do fight for you to get an offer—or not.
Getting the Recruiter on Your Side
Simply by respecting the recruiter’s role, you’re off to a great start. Far too many candidates see recruiters as just a minion in the recruiting process who is there to do their bidding.
- Be polite.
Always show your recruiter politeness and courtesy. Follow up with him, but don’t pester him. Respect that he’s busy and works with many candidates. - Use good grammar and spelling.
Using correct grammar and spelling when e-mailing your recruiter will show professionalism. Minor grammatical mistakes will probably be forgiven, especially for international candidates, but “text messaging style” abbreviations are not acceptable. Never write your recruiter with language like, “wat time is d interview.” Make spell check and grammar check your friends. - Ask questions.
Ask the recruiter questions about the company, the position, and so on. Make sure that these questions don’t have easily discoverable answers online. By asking insightful questions, you show that you’re passionate about the company—and about learning. - Seek their advice.
Though the recruiter may not be an expert in finance, engineering, marketing, or whatever position you’re applying for, she’s probably seen a lot more interviews than you have. Seek the recruiter’s advice about what skill sets are more important, how to prepare for the interview, and the like. Even if she can’t answer your questions, she’ll appreciate that you respect her opinion enough to ask.
Communication and Behavior
“I did horribly,” Avi tells me. I know how this is going to go; I’ve had this conversation more times than I can count.
“OK, what happened? Why do you think that?”
“I can just tell. She just didn’t seem happy with any of the answers I gave her.” And there we have it—new candidate, new interview, same mistakes. I go on to explain to Avi his mistake: that an interviewer’s unfriendliness or friendliness has much more to do with her own personality than the candidate’s performance.
An interview is a window into a company; just as the interviewer is trying to look into you and discover your strengths and weaknesses, you will no doubt evaluate the interviewer as a proxy for the company. And interviewers know this.
For this reason, a good interviewer will do his best to leave you with a positive impression, regardless of your performance. He should smile, offer positive reassurance, and give you his full attention. Even if he has effectively written you off as a “no hire,” you have friends and colleagues who may interact with the company down the road. Recruiting is too important to a company’s future to just disregard anyone’s perceptions.
Of course, there are still unfriendly interviewers. There are interviewers who push back on your responses with a condescending tone, and there are interviewers who are distracted and don’t give you their full attention. They probably usually behave like that. Unless you know your interviewer from other situations (which would be inappropriate), you have no idea how to interpret his attitude.
With all that said, an interviewer’s behavior is probably 80 percent his personality and 20 percent you—this is the “80/20 Rule of Body Language.” That 80 percent makes it difficult to understand
why
your interviewer is acting a particular way, but that 20 percent you can leverage to put yourself in the best possible situation.