The Day I Interviewed At Google

Getting a job at Google might not sound as cool as it was ten years ago, straight after their Initial Public Offering; but, although this company has become a corporation, the lifestyle that you gain by working there is pretty amazing. Yes, I interviewed at Google in London for a summer internship as an Associate Product Manager.

I actually had a first phone interview, where they asked me a “behavioural question”, a “product” one and finally an analytical. It was pretty straightforward and also amazing, because you don’t get “normal questions”, but it’s more a race to determine if you are crazier than the interviewer, and if you are, you move to the on site interviews.

After a few weeks, before new year’s eve, I received an email saying I had passed the phone screen and I was moved to the next stage “on site”. This is something similar an Assessment Centre run by banks. You spend the whole day at Google and you get between 3/4 interviews. In my case, I went through 4 interviews, 3 with Product Managers and 1 Technical.

Two assessed my “product” skills, one was “analytical” and the last one was purely technical. For the first three, the advice is to be crazy, understand Google, lead the conversation and show off as much as you can. As soon as they asked me the first question, I got the marker and told the guy I was going to the whiteboard. We also talked about strategy and the future, so an advice is to read TechCrunch, The Next Web, The Verge, on a daily basis and understand companies’ moves. You are not interested in what happens but why.

I just received an email by the recruiter who told me she would let me know next week, probably on wednesday. If I have passed this stage, I move to the next one, a 3 page essay to be written in 48hrs. I feel like I did good in the first three interviews and underperformed in the technical one, even though I should suppose to be a “Computer Scientist”.

This wasn’t an in-depth post about what really happened. The reason is because Google doesn’t let you tell everything publicly and also because I am not sure I passed this stage, so I’d rather focus on my own things, wait, reflect and let you know what is going to happen in the next few days.

If I go through this stage and the essay one, I’ll probably describe in detail everything and even blog during the summer; but it’s an hard guess and the APM program is probably the hardest program to get in. Keep in mind that for a Software Engineering Internship you just have to pass 2 interviews, I already went through 5. lol.

Stay Tuned!