Google says its bizarre interview questions were 'a complete waste of time'

“They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.”

Australia's largest state hits record-high COVID-19 cases despite weeks of strict lockdown. 'It's a tinderbox ready to explode,' one official said.
eToro says crypto made up 73% of trading commissions in the last quarter, as retail customers dived in
A flight attendant says she was too exhausted to report a passenger who shoved her when a flight was overbooked: report
US jobless claims climb for first time in 5 weeks, to 353,000

IF YOU HAVE ever experienced a job interview with Google, or just read about what applicants have to go through, you know it can be gruelling.

Until a few years ago, Google was infamous for asking brainteasers such as, “How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?” and “Why are manholes round?” It now admits that those questions were useless.

“We found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time,” Laszlo Bock, Google’s Senior Vice President of People Operations, tells The New York Times. “How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.”

In addition to trashing brainteasers, Google is also moving away from set requirements based on the grades people received in third level education. Bock says there is a correlation between good employees and high GPAs and test scores if you’re just a few years out of school. But for every other candidate, Google no longer asks for that information.

What’s Google’s hiring tactic now? Bock says his team uses behavioral interviews and asks for examples of how a person acted in a particular situation. It no longer asks hypothetical questions. Google also uses structured behavior interviews with a consistent rubric for assessing each person.

“The interesting thing about the behavioral interview is that when you ask somebody to speak to their own experience, and you drill into that, you get two kinds of information,” Bock says. “One is you get to see how they actually interacted in a real-world situation, and the valuable “meta” information you get about the candidate is a sense of what they consider to be difficult.”

Google also looks for leadership examples among candidates.

Here’s some examples of the type of questions Google used to ask

Design an evacuation plan for a major city
How many piano turners are there in the entire world?
How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap?
A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?
You need to check that your friend, Bob, has your correct phone number but you cannot ask him directly. You must write the question on a card and give it to Eve who will take the card to Bob and return the answer to you. What must you write on the card, besides the question, to ensure Bob can encode the message so that Eve cannot read your phone number?
You have eight balls all of the same size. Seven of them weight the same, and one of them weighs slightly more. How can you find the ball that is heavier by using a balance and only two weighings?
You are shrunk to the height of a coin and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?

Making a difference

A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation.

For the price of one cup of coffee each week you can make sure we can keep reliable, meaningful news open to everyone regardless of their ability to pay.

Support us Learn More