24 Most Asked Questions in Interviews at Google

continuing my series with the most commonly asked questions at some of the most successful companies today I will talk about the 24 most asked questions in Google interviews and them first things first you should if you've been following my channel you'll know that I also shared questions from other companies such as Amazon or Facebook and the first thing that you should understand is that Google is a lot less focused on the behavioral part of their interviews when compared to companies such as Amazon for example so probably the equivalent of Amazon's 14 dosha principles would be Google's 10 things but that's as close as it gets to behavior questions behavioral questions also before we begin I would assume that you already know by now that the best way to answer such questions are with the star method that is to talk about the situation and tasks then to give a few sentences for the action and finally the results so without further ado let's let's just get to these questions the least asked of the 24 questions is tell me about them when you are not able to meet the time commitment and what prevented you from meeting it and what was the outcome and what you did what did you learn from it I'm assuming you're not familiar with behavioral interviewing if you are watching this video or you're not too familiar with this thing so shortly did in a few words this is a negative story a time when you were not able to meet the time commitment so probably the most important piece of information here is to talk about a genuine story where you are not able to meet the time going to but even more interestingly how do you know it's a good story and one that actually had an impact so because you did weren't able to meet time commitment something happened some measurable some quantifiable outcome these are the best stories so the first advice is to be genuine and the second thing is very important when talking about negative stories to talk about your learnings so if you remember the star method the result should be with your learnings from from this thing so I haven't heard I haven't seen anywhere with Google to endorse the star method but it's my opinion definitely recommend it to do it the next question let's say you're working on a major project and you're in the weeds how do you find your way out now the difference between this and the previous question is that the original question was the negative one here is a challenging situation so I would very much go with the positive outcome in this case and it makes all the difference between because you know especially for the results section you could quantify that the achievements here so again it's a it's a slightly different differently nuanced question but the answers are very different and you should employ a different strategy while answering this next what do you do when you need to motivate a group of individuals so again probably this this won't come up in in applying for for junior developer role but rather for more senior roles but still when motivating group of individuals there are some key elements you must talk about here's how you do your time to listen to what they had to say and how you coach them and how do you build up program and made it medicine an engaging experience if you want next a time when you were faced with a problem that had multiple solutions this could could be in a technology context if you want so a problem that has multiple solutions how would you go about your decision making process how do you find the best possible solution given that specific situation so actually I see usually there are a lot of people who have a hard time coming up with a with an example on the spot so I would very much encourage you to prepare this in advance and the way you find this the easiest way to find examples for this was to think about decision-making both times it took a decision and more often than not if you zoom in or zoom out of the situation you were confronted with multiple options for that decision-making process an inherently with multiple solutions so you should focus on the how how did you arrive this which may be called in for for external help maybe it was something else but anyhow let's say you need something important from a co-worker and that person isn't responding how would you deal with this so this one talks about a bit why they would want to ask you this question such a question gets asked in case they are interested about your interpersonal skills so how do you deal with other people are you easy to get along with are you can you be productive in a high-performing environment which is not always an easy thing so this is this is what they're looking for other than of course a genuine story about these things tell me about the time when you worked with a difficult team member its again on the same topic of interpersonal relationships and what you shouldn't forget to talk about here is how you listen to the other team member and eventually how you earn their trust in order to reach the best possible outcome from from this situation an example where he had to put back to HQ or challenged a decision why they would want to ask you such a question actually for for for many things some people have a tendency to come up with a weak example for for such situations in the sense that they so when you challenge something they are not really challenging that situation but said they would rather go with the flow but make it sound like they they had they had a little bit of challenge there so try to come up with with with a strong example here and by the way the outcome of this doesn't necessarily have to be that you successfully managed to convince your manager or your HQ about about your solution being the best it could be something like maybe your idea wasn't what wasn't the best you you challenged it even in the end et turned out to be their idea which was the best you follow the decision and moved on successfully delivered on on that what was previously agreed so this was this would also be a perfectly viable example that you very much encourage you to use everyone starts somewhere talk about the time when you were new on the job and had a lot to learn how did you manage that by the way I posted this all these questions in video description if you just in case you know the solution or you don't have to note everything down so a time you were new on the job why they would ask you this these such questions well because they want they are interested to see your ability to learn and whether is someone generally curious to learn on your job because needless to say it's an essential quality oh my you must have when working at this dad at the company such as Google so your ability to learn is something very very important here and for example one of the one of the pitfalls here one of the mistakes that people tend to do is they say hey I took everything by myself and in I stay the extra every single day and I eventually mastered the whole thing in one week what they are not talking about is how they probably also took advice from their new colleagues probably also reference some external sources here so you see what this learning experience doesn't have to be something you do as a solo initiative and this is something I would expect many people to say actually job interviews especially dating people that tend to be more introverts so make it sound like you also successfully but also took ideas from the invite from from other people from other sources as well so these would be something that you would want to be careful about describe a long-term project that you manage how did you keep everything moving along in a timely manner these of course the deceptive questions are of course more for like management roles or rather most senior roles and the reason why they would ask you this because they want to see how you first of all if you have an example of a sufficiently interesting project because if you talk about a type of project that you successfully delivered over three months without any events going on that's a boring project a boring answer so they want to see whether you have something interesting to talk about here and you should probably prepare about the more interesting project you've worked on throughout your career and if you managed to add some spice some interesting information to this to these types of situations you will see that you will have many many opportunities to focus on your strengths so if you think about one to three strengths that you have make sure that you mentioned them within this context and when you manage a project on the long-term so this is needless to say this is a gift that they give to you so you must do at RIT everything you can to to take advantage of it tell me about the toughest decisions you've had to take in the past six months so everyone has to take decisions on daily basis and by the way in a professional context needless to say here if you think of an example it will be the challenge here is not that you don't have you have not decided or something the challenge here would be to find something significantly interesting enough that you could use in your example so this is a this is the main challenge here when you when you decide on something significant the past how do you know this is significant it had an impact by measuring its impact so think about something that had a true impact here next what your strengths and weakness as I said the just a few sentences back it's important to know your strengths because whenever you're receiving a question that would allow you to self advertise in a way to not talk about you in a negative context you should basically talk about your strengths and also while when being asked tell me about yourself you should talk about your strengths when they ask you why do you want to work at Google you should talk about your strengths between others things so this is for the Sangh the weakness is the weakness is the the greatest risk here with weakness is that you will talk about you will put a positive of strength as a weakness you turn a positive into a negative for example you pay too much attention to details or you you sees all these things that you would say are our strengths but you will look at them from a weakness perspective also I wouldn't necessarily go with using work/life balance as a weakness because this would make your loss less interesting for a co-worker called team member so whenever they ask you a question they would be they will be screwing on one of the following one or more the following three things first is is this person someone who I who I enjoy working with on my team the second is does this person have necessary toughness to get the job done because when dealing with teams of high performers there are challenges if not challenge the differences in ideas in an opinion there are many other types of challenges and the third one whether it's personal general inter in job which if you believe there's any chance of not being clear and explicit enough you could say maybe towards the end of the interview when everything is a I really want the job it's not a bad thing it's just I think about it all right so we were talking about the weaknesses so it must be a real weakness for example introversion or you can be too assertive at times or for example if you if you if you're someone really technical you could talk about sales as weakness if you're someone from sales you can talk about the technical experience be a relative weakness next give me an example of a time you fix the conflict while working on a team and how do you handle that again this is a conflict situation it doesn't have to be a negative outcome I would rather go with a positive outcome because I want to be positive - other interview because positivity sells much better the negativity usually while working on a team so it's very important that you think about of this in a professional context the context and if you're a recent graduate of course you know project that you worked on recently conflict means you must listen you must employ diplomacy you must show interpersonal skills and you must communicate set up meetings discuss with the various stakeholders multiple times if needed and so on tell me about the time when you recovered from a difficult situation this this should be a positive story but you should add some drama there and should talk about a difficult situation and the way you know it's difficult because it had a significant impact on you it you must really ensure that you convince your interview that it was a tough situation from which you want to get out of and of course in a prefer in a professional context it'll say everything everything they would ask you in a and behavioral part of of an interview is in a professional setting unless you really cannot find anything so you will go with or personal 1 turn about time when you missed an obvious solution to approach to a problem again this is this is something you would want to think of in advance because these are you know more like the brain teasers that are still used at Google and yeah there's that I mean in any in any complex problem you could argue that there was an obvious solution if only you have dive deeper to understand the brother mother of the thing or you know had you taken some external advice on what to look at fetch I skipped one here tell me about a time when you know when you took a turn about the time when you took the lead on a difficult project this will be another one a time when you took a lead on a difficult project means the time when that going was was was rough and you decided to step in or you were assigned to step in that also works but be very careful that you show your leadership your ownership of this project because more often than not people put it in a context like I I went there I planned the project and it went well you see so there must be something some drama there so make make sure your your example is a compelling one here tell me about time when you came up with a new approach to a problem this is this is because they want to see how you how you can probably simplify if if not invent stuff come up with with your decision-making and with dinner yes sir you see we within an innovative environment and it's often that the most innovative people calling for external help contrary to too many people many others to the exit to the expectation so also take in mind to take take opinions from everywhere you can while talking about this example right so in your example consider talking how you took ideas from from multiple sources describe a time when you found it difficult to work with someone from a different background interpersonal skills multicultural environments I think we which touched upon this one pretty pretty well throughout throughout this video tell me about the time when you had to deal with ambiguity so the main reason why they would want to they would ask you this question because they want to see how you your me to dive deep into a problem to understand the various the various elements that influence that that that ambiguous situation seemingly and they want to see your thought process they want to see also your decision-making they want to see how you can deliver results within ambiguous environments maybe you call you would come up with an example where something where results were required immediately and the situation was ambiguous and how you manage to successfully of course arrive to the best possible decision next actually this one is the sixth most commonly asked one turn about the time when you made sure a customer was pleased with your service so unsurprisingly Google is also a company that cares about customers and and these one the question customarily the questions are are usually pretty high on on on a company most commonly has behavioral questions at other companies as well not as much as Google because Google is more like with long-term projects with AI and all that stuff I'm comparing with the Facebook's hacking culture and with Amazon's being with customers is always first and customer obsession all that stuff but still also in and Google these questions might arise and basically how you want to go about about these things is to talk about how you started with the customers and work backwards from there my customer is always first and you understand the need first and then you you work backwards from there also important to understand what's your first customer your direct customer right not your secondary tertiary and all that stuff on number five most commonly asked question we have people describe a time when you improved a process with a limited budget so um this actually asks for an answer that shows frugality so when you are frugal about about implementing something this could be done through standardization for for example or this could be done measures and in invention but make sure they also show curiosity whenever you can also be open to ideas tricks to outside ideas I think we touched upon multiple times throughout this video number four it's another customer related question we all deal with difficult customers from title and tell me about the challenging client facing situation and how you handled it needless to say I mean you know you should always style as I just said you start with the customer and work work backwards from there think about the situation and important here a challenging client a situation despite the fact that you're talking about the challenging client or in spite the fact that you're talking about such a situation you should make sure that you you have that sense of business acumen enhanced and you you understand the dynamic of of the situation so well that you don't get your business your employer in an unprofitable spot right so it's not necessarily always about image it's also it's a business exchange you give something you must take something back this is very very important eyes I don't see many people especially technical people understand about answering these customer related questions which as you can see they are quite commonly asked number three most asked question at Google in Google interview system about a team project that you worked on which by the way could be the most successful project you've ever worked on so this is a gift that they give you in order to see hey what have you been working on and it'll say you must prepare these things even if it takes you one day to prepare them about the team project that you worked on you should definitely spend the time to to ensure that it's a proper answer and of course in the start formatting a quantifiable results talk about your role in the team talk about what about whomever else you are working with talk about what was the goal why was important and yes may make sure that example is a compelling one this is this is how it should go the second most commonly asked question and Google is done about the situation where we had to resolve a difficult problem so the main reason why they would ask you for this is not only to see your problem-solving skills but whether you have had difficult problems whether you're the type of I mean you see interesting people deal with interesting problems so you should actually take the time and find the best possible example for this specific scenario it's not just you know I oh we had a small problem we had three bugs three cosmetic problems in the software and we had to address them it's not just that you you must really have find a difficult problem that maybe it was an emergency or three emergency or maybe you are at risk from losing it there was a lot at stake there this is the best way to put it so this how it should you should work and then put it in frame it in a star format and that that's it and finally unsurprisingly the most commonly asked question in any Google interview is why Google which by the way as as unsurprising this question is you'll be surprised how easy it is to miss the opportunity to score points on this one what what most people do and ask why Google they praised Google and move on right like yeah Google is a very innovative company I get to work with the most smartest people in the world and I very much want to be part of the journey right there's nothing wrong with this I accept that everyone says it I mean there's nothing wrong you do not differentiate yourself from other people applying for for the same role and as you might know that there is quite a bit of competition with this thing so you must find a way to differentiate yourself with this especially with this question so a better way to answer it would be I want to work at Google for three reasons first one okay you praise Google if true so if you could entirely skip this one if you want but the second one could would be how can you make a difference there can you think about something throughout your career that would highlight you as a great candidate for this or if you're a recent graduate you know something that would set you apart from other candidates of course some sort of strength some sort of project these types of things and the third reason watching for you why do you want to order I mean there are many other companies innovative companies that are very good with AI and all that all that stuff and many other profitable companies as well if you're not applying for a tip for a technology job but why do you want to work there watching for you where do you see yourself in next five years these are the types of questions that should actually trigger the differentiators that you would want to speak about when applying for such a role so there you go did this would be the 24 most asked questions at the Google of course I'll link them in the in the video description right next to that like button and as always I hope you found this this information useful thank you very much for watching

Channel: Dan Croitor

Views: 50,521

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Id: rn7JItdkRPE

Length: 26min 37sec (1597 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 23 2019