Editor’s note: This article was first published in June 2013, when Laszlo Bock was a Google executive; he later left the company, and Google’s hiring practices may have changed since.
Until a few years ago, going through Google’s hiring process was a kind of nightmare for candidates, who ended up worn out from answering questions like “How much would you charge to clean every window in Madrid?” or “How many golf balls fit in a school bus?” (Read: 6 brainteasers from Google’s job interviews). Its interview system seemed “cool”, and that is why it was copied by many multinationals, including Wall Street, home to what are probably the toughest job interviews on the planet.
Laszlo Bock, Google’s vice-president of people operations, has admitted to The New York Times that these questions are a complete waste of time and that they don’t predict anything about the candidate. “They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.”
That is why the selection technique Google now uses is the behavioural job interview, in which candidates are asked to give examples of how they acted in a situation similar to the one put to them. Hypothetical questions are no longer asked; instead, it’s a specific situation the candidate has probably been through.
According to Bock, the behavioural interview provides two kinds of information. The first is how candidates actually dealt with a real situation in the real world. The second is insight into what the candidate finds easy and difficult, as well as which areas they feel most confident in.
Not to mention that many of these situations are ideal for gauging a candidate’s leadership ability, something companies increasingly require.
That said, from now on, if you go to a job interview and they ask you how many golf balls fit in a school bus, it’s practically legal to answer: “To be honest, I’ve never been bored enough to sit down and count them.”
Further reading
- Google-style job interviews may be costing you good workers
- Job interviews: protocol for the battlefield
- The most outrageous mistakes in a job interview
Featured image: Daniel X. O'Neil, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
