I Didn't Get Hired to Google

He made an extensive repository of information on how to get hired at Google[1], gave talks on the subject[2], and studied full time for 8 months[3].<p>And it&#x27;s not that he interviewed and didn&#x27;t get the job...they didn&#x27;t even let him interview, not even the phone screen. That&#x27;s pretty rough.<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;jwasham&#x2F;google-interview-university" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;jwasham&#x2F;google-interview-university</a><p>[2]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;googleyasheck.com&#x2F;presenting-at-code-fellows&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;googleyasheck.com&#x2F;presenting-at-code-fellows&#x2F;</a><p>[3]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;googleyasheck.com&#x2F;why-i-studied-full-time-for-8-months-for-a-google-interview&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;googleyasheck.com&#x2F;why-i-studied-full-time-for-8-mont...</a>

Title says: <i>&quot;I Didn&#x27;t Get Hired. Here&#x27;s Why.&quot;</i><p>Body says: <i>&quot;Why didn&#x27;t I get hired? I don&#x27;t know why.&quot;</i><p>Real question to HN readers: Do you believe this type of inconsistency also affects writing <i>code</i>?<p>In other words... if a hiring manager notices this muddled writing in a blog post, is it fair to think the programming output will also be muddled? (e.g. function names, architecture, engineering the organization of microservices, code comments etc.?)<p>Or do you believe that the brain compartmentalizes and it&#x27;s very easy to write disorganized prose simultaneously with organized code?

Recruiter and resume writer here. I&#x27;m at least somewhat surprised, and I assume his resume had references to his PR campaign, and I&#x27;d think that in itself (along with the somewhat limited qualifications he seems to have) would at least warrant a phone screen. Even if that phone interview was to feel him out a bit.<p>I am genuinely curious to see his resume (I didn&#x27;t see it on this site or his other blog). Again, I&#x27;d have to assume it was at least somewhat littered with references to his dream of working for Google (the GitHub repo gives that away, and maybe he linked to his blog).<p>His current LinkedIn profile starts with a Projects section (I&#x27;d have recommended a summary) and the first project listed is &quot;Google Interview University&quot;, so I assume any recruiter vetting him would have immediately seen that, then noticed that his experience section starts with &quot;in training for a software engineer interview, April 2016 - present&quot;, and then perhaps into the rabbit hole of all his posts.<p>This might be a case of someone &quot;trying too hard&#x2F;pandering&quot; to one audience. If we take away the Google-related content on LinkedIn, we&#x27;ve got a guy who has 5 years of experience running what appears to be a light tech startup, ~ 15 years of demonstrated web dev experience, several Coursera courses, and an active GitHub.<p>If you only gave his GitHub 5 seconds (without opening any of the repos themselves), I&#x27;d think most recruiters would think he&#x27;d be worth at least a quick phone call. Maybe they dove in and didn&#x27;t like what they saw.<p>More questions than answers on this one.

Two things:<p>He lists himself as an &#x27;Autodidact&#x27;, I wonder if he has a BSc and if not, if that contributed to not getting a phone screen. If it did, thats pretty rough since he also lists 15 years of experience.<p>Also I&#x27;m very curious about this comment on the post:<p><i>Honest question: who told you to make this blog? Email me john@techcrunch.com</i><p>Not quite sure what he&#x27;s implying by &#x27;who told you&#x27;, anyone know?

I don&#x27;t understand why people get DEAD set on just one company - that&#x27;s never a good way to do things, especially when the application process is so fickle, and especially if that company is literally the most applied for company (or one of them at least). It&#x27;s not like university applications, where they&#x27;re at least obligated to reply back.

This whole journey has been so weird. Why does this guy care so much about Google? Did Google turn him down for prom? Was &quot;Google&quot; the last word of his dying grandfather? He&#x27;s been on a years-long vision quest to... be an employee of a place.

I have to assume that they didn&#x27;t want someone who was so fanatically and excessively eager and ambitious. He broadcasted that he studied full-time for eight months for the interview. They want people who can walk in and own the interview, with minimal interview-specific preparation.<p>The entire blog just reeks of desperation and lack of confidence (or worse, misplaced confidence). I think that they flagged him before he ever applied.

Titling the piece “I Didn&#x27;t Get Hired. Here&#x27;s Why.”, and then after one paragraph clarifying “Why didn&#x27;t I get hired? I don&#x27;t know why.” …is confusing, to say the least.

No surprise. You can learn a lot in a year, but you can&#x27;t level up your computer science knowledge in a year. Some people might be offended or disappointed by this comment, but don&#x27;t. Just keep your heads down, learn a lot, expose yourself to lots of different things and the experience will come with that.<p>With that said, I&#x27;m not surprised that he didn&#x27;t get a phone interview. Even if Google knew about him, they might want to let people know that their interview process can&#x27;t be gamed. If I was hiring, I might be concerned that someone who put in that much effort, might stall once they get hired. I want someone who has put that kind of effort not leading up to the interview, but over the years due to genuine curiosity due to love of computing and not because they want to get a job.

The two times I applied at Google after being recommended by friends already in charge went quite badly. The recrutor asked for my CV thrice the first time (rejecting my application between each request, until I stopped answering), and the second time I had to wait three weeks between the first coding interview and the actual results. Apparently, my hiring manager took some vacations, and her replacement had no idea about my file.<p>I applied only once at Facebook, and the whole process was a bliss. Constant flow of communication with my recruiter, very interesting interviews, and a relatively short time between the start of the process and the final result. It was really weird to see such a big difference between two big tech companies.

You didnt get hired at google because you have no life, no sense of self. Your entire blog is about how you make yourself hireable by google. Who cares what google wants. What do you want?

I also would not hire such a freaky. Can you imagine how much headache he could create (in terms of office politics), in case of a situation that would affect his employment at Google? He is even not professional I think.

&gt;After all this work and enthusiasm, I didn&#x27;t even get a chance to prove myself.<p>Is this his first time applying for a job or, you know, interacting with the world in any way?

This post makes me want to know what John Biggs wants. In the comments, &quot;Honest question: who told you to make this blog? Email me john@techcrunch.com&quot;

Maybe it&#x27;s because he was trying to openly game the system (as it seems)?

Maybe they didn&#x27;t want the method of &quot;create an interview study guide and write a popular blog about studying for it&quot; seen as being one of the ways to get hired at Google, and having a flood of imitators try to do the same thing.

Apply directly to YouTube. They have super-friendly, involved recruiters that do a fantastic job.

&gt; Recruiters look at hundreds of resumes every day, and they are highly tuned to detecting quality candidates and rejecting those who don&#x27;t match up with their model. For some reason, I just didn&#x27;t fit the profile. They probably are doing me a favor.<p>They would be doing you a favour if they would tell you why you were rejected and give you advice moving forward. In this case they are just doing themselves a favour by not bothering to give you anything meaningful.<p>&gt; but if you&#x27;re good enough for Google, you&#x27;ll eventually get in.<p>If you don&#x27;t get in the first time, you might want to ask yourself: is Google good enough for you?<p>&gt; Recruiters know what works, and what doesn&#x27;t. So respect their decision and be polite.<p>A lot of recruiters are incredibly incompetent, they don&#x27;t always know what works and what doesn&#x27;t and they can just reject you due to their own incompetence. You should always be polite, because being rude rarely earns you any favours, not because the recruiters are always right, and you should feel sorry for them.<p>&gt; There are a lot of places where I can strive for greatness and have that effort rewarded.<p>This is why you should never be hung up on one person from one big company rejecting you.

This rejection is symbolic of a large problem emerging in the tech talent pool, similar to the &quot;not-an-MBA&quot; that we&#x27;ve seen ruin the management culture.<p>Large companies where you can learn a ton, and work with smart and motivated people, are filtering based on not entirely relevant CS trivia. They still have many viable candidates as anyone coming out of a university has four years where their job is explicitly to learn this stuff.<p>The stuff ends up being so esoteric, that rarely will these trainees actually be able to use this knowledge for their own programs (i&#x27;m open to counterexamples here). But the reward of going to work for say Google is so immense - both monetarily and in experience and connections, that students accept the cost of learning the wrong stuff for the future benefit, the job where you &quot;actually start learning valuable knowledge&quot;<p>The next level up in a career is looking for engineers with a proven history of being able to scale. Guess who that is: last year&#x27;s hires, who got brought into an already working system.<p>This is the pattern we see in management of Fortune-500&#x27;s and prestige banks. This has created a culture where you have to buy your way in the door with years of what a lot of people who actually do it, will admit is largely B.S. Again, this is not irrational though, because there is often a dramatic drop-off in quality of opportunities if you don&#x27;t buy into the game.<p>So since everyone else is convinced (perhaps rightly so) that the real value doesn&#x27;t come until you&#x27;ve been in an elite position, the effect is to erode all value in acquiring knowledge, skills and experience, in anything that doesn&#x27;t neatly fit the filtering game.

I bet there are other companies who would be happy to have you in!

I wonder if his lack of CV (of any kind), no matter how much he studied was what made recruiters discard him right away.<p>You can learn a lot in a year, but you can&#x27;t create a CV containing a career that may look attractive.<p>(Google process is pretty much optimised to quickly discard applications)

Does anyone know if rejection letters from Google pre-phonecall-phase are normal? I mean, I&#x27;ve applied a couple of times (I might look faded compared to other brilliant people that apply and I had nowhere this guy&#x27;s drive and level of involvement but thought that it is worth a shot) and every time I didn&#x27;t hear anything back. I though they just contact you in case of a positive.

The people who read these books, and the companies who come up with these contrived interviews deserve each other.

&gt; &quot;This is my multi-month study plan for going from web developer (self-taught, no CS degree)...&quot;<p>No CS degree and no CS background. I wonder why he wasn&#x27;t chosen (and why HN dismiss Google interviews as silly games...).

Their loss.

Posts of people crying so much about not getting hired by a company (usually Google) are top cringe.<p>It&#x27;s like writing on Facebook that you feel miserable because a girl rejected you.<p>Just move on, kid.

He&#x27;s not missing much. It&#x27;s just a big squabbling company.