een waiting for
let's have an interview at Google actually is tomorrow
what we're doing right now is I'm here with my co-host of travelers podcast you
know I Lohse and loss is one of the best
how is like interviewees one of the best people that do interviews he is really
great knowledge of interviewing he's done a lot of interviews
I'm a best your viewer you're a student of the interview
i am a student of the student of the interview so what we're doing tonight is
I'm going to present to him what I've prepared to present to google tomorrow
and hopefully those will give me some good notes and we'll talk about tactics
and maybe he can go over with me you know some questions and answers get me
get me like in the mindset for a successful interview and then tomorrow
morning
I drive down the mountain view and indoor six hours of interviewing and I
don't feel prepared at all
number one tip and ask for water drink a lot of it so you can go picking a break
what am I gonna do for naps that's what I'm curious about who I was going to
sleep in the bathroom
all right let's get started
yeah
yeah
so here i am about to go in to the Google offices
I can't take my camera in there i asked already they said no but here I am in
the parking lot and i'm about ready to go in to do my interview is going to be
a six hour interview
so I'm practicing my my presentation in the car here
no screaming some good notes last night and wish me luck this is it will talk to
you in about six hours
alright that's it for my day at Google Google campus in the parking lot
i just spent six plus hours talking to seven different interviews or something
i didn't had presented to a panel and I had one on one interview one-on-one
interviews for a while
had lunch and had a bond me salad which is kind of fun
I have no idea what to think it seemed like it went well i don't feel like i
bombed anything but i have no idea what that means it could mean anything
anyway depending on how fast the feedback can come back to the recruiter
I might know this week I might know next week if if I'm going to get an offer or
not so anyway
cross your fingers thanks for coming with me to google campus and we'll see
you soon
so it's been a few days since since those interviews and reviewing the
footage now I realize that they could have done a better job of capturing the
like the atmosphere
I wouldn't wasn't able to take my camera in but around the campus would have been
fun for you guys to see and maybe another day we'll do that but it has
been a few days 10 days actually
and yesterday I finally heard back from from the recruiter and then it's
exciting news
they like the interviews I was so stressed
out for a long time and I guess that's the reason I haven't blogged in 10 days
is because i didn't like know what to say right
like hello I'm still waiting it is just it's hard so they like the interviews
and now i'm going to progress to the next level of of interview process with
google now if you're not familiar with the logs that have been doing up into
this point there's been quite a process already i think it's been like two or
three months for of interviews and like a lot of that is just waiting around
so if you're not familiar with the steps we've taken so far let's review those
and then see what should be happening next
so much for a little map here of the google interview process the first thing
that's going to happen is that you're going to give it a contact from a
recruiter and that's going to be the email
the next thing that's going to happen is you're going to get the recruiter is
going to call you in to a phone spring after that you'll have a phone screen
with people that will be working in your department in my case with other
designers
now the designers that you're going to talk to or at least the people that I
talk to maybe one of them i had two people on the line because one of them
was in training these people here these two screens here i call them screens
because their job is to get you out
their job is to get you out of the interview process because they're trying
to filter people they have a lot of people come through and in get to these
two levels and their job is to say quickly are they good enough to bring
them to go through the expense of like traveling like paying for a plane ticket
in a hotel room if they're out of state or even just taking up the time of
everybody involved in the in the on-site process and if you pass this phone
screen
I mean well I mean get I guess either way you'll have the recruiter call you
again
I don't know my recruiter seemed especially interested in me
maybe that's normal maybe she's just really nice one but she gave me a really
good feedback and she was very encouraging the whole time so
and it seemed like she was taking special care i don't know if they do
that every time to try to make everybody feel special but she made me feel
special so thank you
after the recruiter feedback comes the design challenge
this is probably the hardest bit of the whole interview
I didn't sleep for a whole night ok i worked throughout the night and usually
i only sleep three hours a night but that night it was really bad
well really exhausting anyway so after the design challenge you send it in and
then after that you do a whole lot of waiting and also there's definitely some
forms to fill out while you're waiting
after you're done filling out the forms and there's a you know all about waiting
i think it was like two weeks
the next step is to go on site for interviews
it's about six hours and i couldn't bring the camera in there as I just
explained you know you're in there for you and you're going to speak to a panel
i opened up with a panel and gave them a presentation which was actually the
design challenge that revisiting it and for my design challenge and for my
presentation they were slightly different because i went back to the
design challenge and we've been refreshed it with new ideas and new
insights and kind of like unlike updated graphics a little bit because I wanted
to be even better this time because I knew that the people interviewing you're
not necessarily the people that had seen the the presentation for the design
challenge
previous to this although they might have some of them did some of them doing
so after the interviews if the interviews do well and this is kind of
like where I am right now
I got a call yesterday and the next step is there's something called a hiring
board and the hiring board is with these are the people that actually make the
decision
so these interviewers are not the one deciding to hire you
what happens is the recruiter will go and collect all the feedback from the
interviews and they'll go again you have to fill out more forms and and collect
all the information in presentation everything that you've done so far your
references and everything and they'll submit to the hiring board the hiring
Board meets every Thursday
so if you if you get it in on like that for example my own views were on Tuesday
they needed a day to collect the the feedback and then thursday we're trying
to get into the hiring board will we missed that day so I had to wait 10 days
another week you know another seven days to get into the hiring board so hiring
board reviews all the progress that you've done so far and makes a call if
that works out for you and mind my heart a board approved my application there
there's more forms now these forms are going to ask you about what's your
current salary and like what are your current benefits and they're trying to
what they're trying to do is get a lot of information for you from you so that
they can make an educated offer you know they don't want to offer you too much or
too little
so they're trying to you know find that sweet spot for you to make you feel
validated to feel excited about joining Google but also not cost them as much
you know and then after the after you fill out these forms and also they want
references and like a bunch of bunch of details really a lot of details actually
after all that took like it wasn't a huge form but the but they wanted like
this level of detail that was kind of exhausting took me like two hours to
fill out those forms after the forms it goes to
I think it's called an executive board and the executive board are the people
who will create the package and and actually you know the the what is it
called the recruiters will tell you that these are the people that are making the
decisions on whether or not to hire you and obviously they're not lying to you
but they kind of suggests that once that's done it's kind of like done and
these people will not say anything else but you know I was talking to a friend
who applied to google and he got past the hiring board but still gotta know
from the executive board and so he did not get the job even though he had
passed the hiring bored so I mean that's just like some anecdotal evidence but
these people can say no I guess and but their main job
a
as explained to me by the recruiter is just to kind of create the package and
give up the final approval I guess after the executive board
apparently it goes to Larry Page Larry page's desk where he approves every
single higher at Google
apparently i ran a room here so let's just kind of start writing here after
Larry Page you're going to get the offer
well let me just kind of do this right here so we're down here now going up and
go up and then down this way so after after Larry Page says yeah let's do that
they're going to send me the offer and all the official offer and the official
offer comes in and then after that it's time to negotiate
we could talk another time about negotiation and it probably is a good
idea but really quickly i'll say that if you go through all of this trouble and
then you just accept whatever they offer you
you're not you're not getting your full value because you know a lot of a lot of
a lot of the things that you negotiate on the terraces a lot of the advantages
that you get when you're moving moving companies or like trying to level up in
life or whatever it is there's their these moments these key moments where
you can make a big impact on what happens next
and if you accept what somebody tells you right away at the first you know the
first moment without trying to push here push their see where things are
malleable
then you're just kind of get going to go the path where people tell you to go
so this is the stage where you definitely want to kind of buckle down
put on your put on your big boy pants in and negotiate
so I'm not at that level yet I'm right I'm right
here so i guess it would be more vlogs
but that's the google interview process so far and that's where we are now
next I want to do some Q&A the questions tonight are all from a single source and
they're about interviewing working for getting prepared for that
that job and they're from John Kenney John Key says both my daughter who is 14
and I have been watching your vlogs and youtube videos you made a large impact
on her decision to look into a career in web design or development or possibly
engineering
so thank you first of all I want to stop there and say that's kind of the reason
that I chose these questions for tonight
I just really really like the idea of a father and daughter watching dev tips
together and kind of getting excited about the prospects of web development
and web design
I have a daughter myself and it's just really
I would just love it if if I could share this with her and that she's five and
that's kind of one of the reasons that I make these videos one of not the only
but i want to have like a log you know I want to have like kind of like a trail
of of information to leave them when i go and maybe the the information is all
about web design maybe they're just going to be interested in seeing how I
behave or other I'm rambling now but like I just like that idea of spending
quality time with your daughter and and getting excited about web design and
development and here we go
I'm sure you have far more pressing blah blah blah blah but I told my daughter
that reach out and ask
so here it goes ok question one do the companies like Microsoft or Google or
even startups look at what college you went to or do your skills matter more
yes they definitely look at what school you went to
most of the people i know that i work with went to school so I can't very well
say that you shouldn't go to school or that it doesn't matter if most everyone
has done that round now
now I didn't go that round so I'm kind of like the anomaly what is this the
string string or face a straight face
I'm kind of the anomaly in in my experience of everybody in the industry
and you know that there's different routes to take in life with it with
anything and going to school will not guarantee that you're going to be
hireable not going to school will not guarantee that you're going to be
hireable in fact it's less likely and the reason is this not because you're
going to be smarter or whatever it's just because there's more paths through
school to land the job for example people like Microsoft and
google that you mentioned and startups go to schools to recruit
mhm they will actually go to the schools and hold presentations and say interview
with us will hold interviews on campus so it's it
the school in a way is kind of like a forum to land these jobs it is
definitely a path there are recruiting grounds right
secondly you know you have these connections at school you a large part
of moving around the industry happens after you've been there a little while
because you meet people and they recognize if you're talented or not and
then they can they need somebody to help them oh we have a job opening up and who
do I know and/or I need help with something who I know
so the who do I no question gets answered a lot in school you meet a lot
of people who do the same things that you do in that industry and if they need
help and they know who to call right
if you don't go to school you have to kind of hostile and build those on your
own so it might be a little harder now
the inverse of that is kind of true as well that you don't have things handed
to you if you don't go to school and we're not saying that things are handed
to you is going to sing understand they're not if you don't you have to
find those connections yourself you have to go out and like built them which can
be can be difficult so I don't know if that answers the question that the
question was does you know does what college you went to or skills matter
more i would say both
you have to be really skilled to bypass college and that comes from time you
know i mean like life when I was when I made the decision to drop out
I wasn't skilled enough to like get a good job if you know I wasn't ready to
to interview a google I've been doing this for a decade for for 10 years you
know and it's taking me a long while to have I mean I wouldn't be able I
wouldn't be able to have successful interviews that like I've been doing
with google 10 years ago
absolutely not it's really hard to answer that question in the the reason
these questions are hard for me to answer is number one I don't have that
college experience
number two is that I'm one person right what you would would be better be off
doing if you really want to discover these things is you know find a panel of
people to ask like ask post this question on Cora . com or like you know
yahoo answers or something like that and people probably corn on yahoo answers
you get some crazy answers on yahoo
anyway let's continue on since my daughter is young
if she follows blogs and learns to run her own server and build either web or
mobile applications by the time she graduates is there a need for college
degree
so I'm sensing a theme here here's the third question do you think you learn
more as a web developer in college or work environment and hands-on so there
is a theme in these three questions of should i go to college or not and if I'm
a dad and I'm asking questions like should I can go to college or not I'm
sensing that there's like a money issue because college is super super expensive
especially in the United States and in a good college is even more expensive than
that you're probably going to run yourself into debt
quite a lot so as a father I I sense and I really empathize with your with your
concern i have no idea what I'm going to turn my kids you know I can't in good
conscience recommend that she doesn't go to school
I'm I'm concerned about my children at how am I going to send them to school do
I want them to go with their be maybe a vocational training that's a little bit
more specific and less general and more like you know what I mean I just I just
feel you i guess i don't really have a great answer i just feel you let me try
to answer more specifically these questions though
ok if she follows the blogs and learns to run her own server and build stuff
by the time she graduates is there a need for college yes
ok so the need for college
the benefit of college is connection and pathways
those are not going to come from skills that she's going to learn if she's
skilled by the time you graduate high school
all the better but it's not going to give you those connections and pathways
to to getting the the job at Google or Microsoft like you spoke about earlier
that's what college is for college is not really for learning although you do
learn their colleges for connecting so it's not the same
and number two or number three do you learn more as a web developer in college
or and work environment hands on hands-on hands-on hands down because
you're going to be doing things are going to be coming up to problems that
you didn't expect that's what that's what work is all about being able to
move move with the roll with the punches like things the cliche and looking for
but like just like move with with the flow of things right and you can't do
that in school where it's like clinical and dry and everything is is expected
the outcomes are are graded and expected it work life is so much more dirty and
like unpredictable and often times you don't know if you're succeeding or not
you know like and that's that's not how school works
so you're going to learn a whole lot more during your first year of work or
internships but that's what internships are for you know that's what
so the whole system is about and I i feel i feel like that because I kind of
skipped over the university around
I am lucky in that way
I kind of like beat the system i don't know if that's true or not but it
definitely saved some money
it's such a hard question man
it life is so unpredictable and if it weren't for like these series of lucky
breaks in my own story
I would be you know this guy that's not interviewing at Google or not having a
successful YouTube channel
or not even having a good job you know like i might still be making you know
thirty thousand dollars a year like in a small town in in the middle of America
and and that doesn't mean i'd be more or less happy
it just means you would be different but I feel I feel really lucky to be able to
work with cutting-edge startups make good money out here in California and to
learn things that I i don't think that i would otherwise
and the fact that i didn't go to school
i think is an anomaly and not the rule it's the exception not the rule
man this is not a good blog anyway that's all I got for you today
John good luck man I know it's hard and as a father there's there's so much
stress involved with trying to help your kids like sort of their lives out and I
don't you have more of an idea than at that than I do my oldest kid is five
years old and she's starting kindergarten and I'm lawyer already
freaking out you know like
did you get a happy face sticker today was it a good one
you know alright thanks for watching everybody and we'll keep on h
