izard

Few months ago I failed a Google job interview. A recruiter approached me directly, telling some very basic words about the position, and I decided to try. My plan was to move as far as I can in the process, and then refuse if I get an offer. I want to stay in Munich and am satisfied with current job scope and compensation. Motivation for going as far as possible in the interview process was meeting smart googlers. So I even informed my boss because did not have any plans to change jobs any way.

I had 4 technical phone/google docs interviews, and failed the last one. During first interview I was running through a corn field to catch a train to Munich, so that was the most exhausting one. Following interviews were less fun: they wanted me to code some simple things as quickly as I can. And the last one I failed was about coding in scripting language. Last time I was writing Python code was in 2008, so I failed miserably, making all possible mistakes. Too bad interviewer did not accept using closure, the language I use for scripting lately.

So the advice is simple: spend few days preparing for the interview, coding some simplest problems from topcoder archives in C and Python. I did not follow this advice myself and did not spend any time preparing because I had to call for the interviews in between of customer trips that required more preparation.

Good news is recruiter told me I can apply once more in one year.