How to Interview Like Google (But Better) - SVCC

GayleL. McDowell | Founder/ CEO, CareerCup
gayle in/gaylemcdgayle
How to Interview Like
Google (or not) – But Better
Best& WorsePractices
Oct 1,2016

gayle in/gaylemcdgayleGayle Laakmann McDowell 2
Hi! I’m Gayle LaakmannMcDowell
Author Interview Coach Interview Consulting
<dev> </dev>
(CS) (MBA)

How People Hire
Current strategies
00

gayle in/gaylemcdgayle 4Gayle Laakmann McDowell
How
We
Hire
Problem-solving questions
Onsite “real-world” tests
Homework
Take-Home Tests
Prior experience
References

Gayle Laakmann McDowell 5gayle in/gaylemcdgayle
It’s all broken
There’s no “perfect” interview.
Always false negatives.
Always false positives.

Problem Solving
Intelligencematters (a
lot)
Lots of communication
Ability to push through
hard problems
Intimidating
Prep helps
Other ways to be “great”
Can turn off sr. candidates
Lots of bad questions

OnsiteReal-World Tests
See real-world skills Identifiescurrent skill
set, notpotential
Lack of communication

Homework
Sees real-world skills.
Cheap & easy
Identifiescurrent skill
set, notpotential
Candidatescan feel
exploited

Prior Experience
It matters
Lots of communication
Some can “talka good
game”
 Somecan’t…

References
Prior experience is
good
Hand-picked
Differentcompanies
have differentneeds
Not always 100%
honest

gayle in/gaylemcdgayle 11
z
Gayle Laakmann McDowell
Not
To
Mention…
NONE evaluate workethic or
ability to focus
(whichisn’tnecessarilyconstant
anyway)

z
What
To
Do?
Find what’s right for you
Identify theflaws
Make it as un-brokenas possible

Core Beliefs
Philosophies around hiring
01

#1: Goodcandidateexperiences matter

#2: Smart beatsknowledgable

#3: It’s On YouTo Get What YouWant

#4: Nothing Is Perfect

The Interview
Goals & Questions
02

Goals
Great employees, not great interviewees
Goodin 6months,not 6days
Reducefalsenegatives
Keepcandidates happy 
19

z
Standard
Interview
Structure
1. ~5 min resume/behavioral
2. Technical questions
3. ~5 minquestions for you

Core Question Types
Experience/Behavioral Questions
Knowledge
Design/Architecture
ProblemSolving/Algorithms
Coding
21
Canbemixedandmatched!

Behavioral/Experience
What doyou ask andwhy?
03

What We LookFor
Isthisapersonyouwanttoworkwith?
Technical expertise
 Hasmadegood,interestingtechnicaldecisions
Culturefit/personality
 Notarrogant,curious,initiative,etc
Communication
 Can theyarticulateimpact?

Engineers don’tlikeinterviews
Hostilitytowards “cheesy” questions
Don’t “get” interviewing

Styles of BehavioralQuestions
Open-Ended Discovery
 “Tell me about _ project”
Situational
 “Tell me about a challenging project”
Hypotheticals
 “How do you handle conflicts?”

ExampleQuestions
“Walk methrough your resume”
“Tellme about theprojects you’ve worked on.”
“Tellmeabout your job. Whatdo you like?”

• Candidates
feel…

The Good andBad
Gives opportunity to talk about whatthey want
Finds stuff noton their resume
Won’t throw themoff
But…
 Unstructured,mightnotgetinfoyouwant

ExampleQuestions
Tellme about a timewhenyou faced a conflict
Tellme about a timeyou had to influencepeople
Tellmeabout a difficultdecision you had to make

Avoid Hypotheticals

Avoid priming

Avoid toospecificquestions

Avoid superlatives

Drill Deeper
• How & Why
• SAR
(Situation,
Action, Result)

Be Reassuring

Know What You’re Looking For

Cross Check

My Favorites
Resumewalk-through
 Doityourselffirst,tosetthestage
Hobbies & stuffnoton your resume
 Warnthatit’sokaytonothaveanything
Pastprojects and work
 Walk throughdesignonwhiteboard
 Discusstradeoffs,keydecisions,etc.
 Extensionstoproject(scaling,etc.)
 Focusonpersonalimpact

z
Check
Your
Interviewers
Is the question likelyto annoy a
candidate?
Did they go beyond surface level?
What did they learn?
Are they surethey learned that?

Knowledge
What do you really need?
04

Examples
What’s thedifference between__ and __?
What are the benefitsof __?
Whatdoes __mean?

Goals
Assess candidate’s skills
 Relativetopositionneeds
 Relativetoexpectations
Make candidate’s experience feel valued

Avoid “quizzing”

Be nice (even when they mess up)

Knowledge ShouldBe…
Hard to obtain
or
A red flag to lack

My Favorites
How does ____ work?
How do you thinkit’s implemented?
Teach meabout ____.

z
Questions
ForYour
Interviewers
Was it a discussion?
Did you probe deeper?
How long would it take to teach this
depth?
If the candidate didn’t know
something: Why not?
Were you positive & reassuring?

Why?
Tests:
 Abilitytotackleopen-endedproblems
 Communication/teamworkskills
 Adifferentsideofproblem-solving
Respects experience of senior candidates

Might be unexpected

Beware of insiderknowledge

Encourage them todrive

Coach your candidates

Evaluation
Ability to make tradeoffs
Ability to identify issues
Separate knowledgefrom attributes
Response to feedback
Higherstandards for more senior candidates

Examples
DesignAPI for…
System for Amazon book rank
System for TinyURL
OOD for a music library

z
Questions
ForYour
Interviewers
Did the candidate need to reallythink?
Did you go deep?
Did you help the candidate through?

Algorithms
Make ‘em think
06

Why?
Smart people do good work
Hires adaptable people
Very effectiveifdonewell

BadPractices& False Negatives
Easy questions
Questions with “a ha” moments
Well knownproblems (or patterns)

Best Practices
Ask the right questions
Be nice and friendly
Relevantwhen possible
Coach
A slow & fast solution
MAKE THEM THINK

The Right Questions
Medium-to-hardquestions
Multiplehurdles
Unusualquestions
Avoid obscure knowledge

ReasonableKnowledge
Data Structures Algorithms Concepts
ArrayLists Merge Sort BigO Time
Hash Tables QuickSort BigO Space
Trees&Graphs Breadth-FirstSearch Recursion
LinkedLists Depth-FirstSearch Memoization/ Dynamic
Programming
Stacks/ Queues BinarySearch
Heaps

Do notask…
Dijkstra’s algorithm
Tree balancing
Topological sort
A*

Be Nice and Friendly
Intimidatedcandidates do poorly
Candidatescling to every word
 Usethis!
 “Goodjob”,“greatpoint”,etc.
Especiallyifthey’restrugglingornervous

Coach
Give hintsas necessary
Encourage examples (input/output)
Remindthemof keydetails
Stop themfrom writingcode too early
YOU managethe time

Phone Interviews vs. Onsite
Don’t “go easy” on thephone
But avoid problems needingdiagrams
 Strings,hashtables,linkedlistsare easytodraw
 Treesandgraphsare hard

Evaluation
Not just correct vs. incorrect
 Howoptimal?Howquickly?Howmanyhints?
Compare to other candidates
 Earlyonyouwon’tbecalibrated
More of a “gut feel”thana metric

Rand7: Given rand5(), implementrand7()
 Has“aha” moment
Bad Questions

More Bad Questions
Implementa stack with a singly linked list
Reverse order of words in a sentence
Merge two sorted arrays
Find duplicates in a string
Given a book, find uniquewords & occurrences
Replace spaces with“-”

Sub Permutations: Given two strings, s and b, find all
permutationsof s within b.
Good Question
Hardquestion
Many parts
Easyknowledge
Uncommon

Max Alive:Given a list of people withbirth/death years,
find peak population
Good Question
Medium difficultyquestion
Several optimizations
Easy knowledge
Uncommon

z
Check
Your
Interviewers
Did the candidate need to reallythink?
Is the question unusual?

Why?
Code quality matters
Not everyone can translatealgorithm into code

Bad Practices & False Negatives
Requiring every detail
Tedious questions
Takingover thetesting
Lettingthe candidate code too early

Don’t waste time
 Do you really need that Node class?
 Skipping uninteresting parts, etc.
Okay to make-up reasonable syntax
Make it clear when they should/shouldn’t code
Encourage testing, refactoring, etc
Don’t stress about compiling
Best Practices

CompilingCode
Requires a lot of overhead
Do it onlyfor good reason

Evaluation
“Seeminglycompilable” code
Look at structure and style
 Butdifferentiatewhat’strainable
Not about complete vs. incomplete
Let the candidate test
Whatisthistellingyou?

z
Check
Your
Interviewers
What did you learn about the
candidate’s coding?
Can the issues be fixed?

Final Thoughts
Things to remember
07

Remember:
It’s on YOU to get theinfo you want
Challengeyour assumptions
Separate “did they do X?” from “can theydo X?”
Whatdid___tellyouaboutthecandidate?

Check Your Interviewers
What didyou learn from thisquestion/answer?
Were they happy andsupportive?
Did they challenge the candidate?

THANK YOU
gayle@gayle.com
gayle in/gaylemcdgayle

How to Interview Like Google (But Better) - SVCC

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