Google's Leadership Interview

hi my name is Jeff H Sipe and I have over 10 years of recruiting experience including 5 years at Google in this video we are going to focus specifically on Google's leadership interview but this information could really apply to anybody interviewing at any company it's really important to remember that leadership comes in all forms at all levels if you like my content please like if you have any comments please comment below and if you like my overall content please subscribe so item1 google's definition google defines the leadership interview as leadership be prepared to discuss how you have used your communication and decision-making skills to mobilize others this might be by stepping up to a leadership role at work or with an organization or by helping a team succeed even when you weren't officially the leader I will cover communication and decision making skills later on but let's start by focusing on a couple of key items first let's really focus on that mobilize others component it's really about how you get people to come together and work together definitely always keeping in mind inclusivity a very important concept at Google and never claiming to know everything while keeping in mind the small details the big picture definitely working in your own team and across teams and that could be internally and externally and ultimately how you get to that shared vision this will really show how you mobilize and then secondly was that kind of stepping up into a leadership role / helping a team succeed so ultimately both these items are really about stepping up and that will show that you consider and recognize team and organizational priorities and there is a very strong likelihood that you get a question like this specifically a behavioral question tell me about a time when you had to step up tell me about a time where you demonstrated leadership qualities etc it's a very very high likelihood so I definitely want you to anticipate this type of question and there's a strong reason why Google calls it out on their careers page item 2 communication we could literally spend hours on this item alone but I want you to think about this concept really in three capacities soft skills consistency and vision so let's start with soft skills soft skills include being humble demonstrating empathy talking about failures having humility being a lifelong learner showing vulnerability transparency trustworthiness humor listening positivity etc and the list goes on and on but it's not a coincidence that Google's couples the googliness interview and the leadership interview together and the reason why is because Google sees these items going hand in hand and so when you communicate these items in the interview specifically with your behavioral examples and utilizing your frameworks I really just want you to call out these soft skills in the form of buzzwords and really make sure that you're implementing them and just talking about them throughout the interview it will create great connectivity with your interviewer second is consistency and this is actually an item that Laszlo Bock highlighted and when you're consistent it just makes you predictable and stable and allows your direct team and other teams to know how you operate and creating that kind of consistency just allows them to flex within that space within that landscape and you yourself are gonna be flexible and nimble but you just want to drive with that consistency piece because when other people know what to expect from you they'll have greater success and that is definitely a leadership quality third is vision and simply put the interviewer has to see how you perceive things and this will most likely come out and how you interact perceive and build relationships and then combine these concepts with the past the present and the future and ultimately all three of those items will shape your results item three decision-making another topic that we could spend endless amounts of time on but three focus areas for this specific item are relying on others being data-driven and process and structure let's start with relying on others and where this is really gonna show up is the doing concept in your behavioural answers so you're gonna be seeing a lot of I but you're gonna talk about how you had an important sunni an important stakeholder who really helped shape the vision help contribute to the ultimate success of the project and as we flip over to frameworks yeah you want to really be focused on that stakeholder component because it's not just stakeholder people are resources and you just can't get it done without them so really focus on that concept second is being data-driven and so as a great leader you need to rely on data and this could be in the form of relying on others relying on documentation maybe it's relying on a resource like an external vendor for example and they provide that data for you but just always be talking about that data component in regards to leadership because true leaders will use data and then third is process and structure and so the way that this shows up is the process and structure will really show up in the actions of your behavioral answers if you're always focused on doing doing doing it's gonna have a lot of success and have a concrete framework and process so such as the PM 101 methodology it's going to talk about relying on others it's going to be talking about looking at the data and ultimately combining all three of these subjects and creating that grade structure is really going to lead to great success item four results leaders produce results and I think as I thought about this item I really wanted to just talk about having a plan and executing on that plan so if you go into the interview with a plan and talk about the execution piece with having that flexibility and just being nimble that's really how results are gonna show up a success and so that could be talking about front-end stuff like goals and objectives and historical data or backend stuff like stakeholders and having a shared vision and then of course when when we talk about results this can be tied to your behavioral answers so in those results are you talking about leverage how did you leverage those results across the organization and then as you think about another component of leadership within these results did you really help a potential team member get a promotion did you make sure that the CEO of that external company you were working with really gave recognition to the entire team for their great work just never brush over the results leaders are able to not only identify but share really solid and concrete results item five learnings if you've watched any of my other videos you know how important this concept and topic is to me leaders are continuous learners and this really shows up in a couple different ways in your behavioral examples you're going to add learnings after results and for frameworks you're just gonna add this learning component to discuss it it's just really impossible for you not to be talking about them thinking about leadership without thinking about learnings how you've learned and grown how you've implemented those learnings to be better in that future position or in your current position item six mentorship so of all the potential leadership questions this is probably pretty close to the top of the list and so I really just want you to take the time and think about what have you mentored somebody in your career and this doesn't have to be a direct report this could be a member of your own team this could be a member on a cross-functional team you could even mentor an external collaborator that you work there is so much flexibility within these types of questions it's most likely gonna be behavioral but it also could be in the form of how do you mentor somebody or what are the most important components of mentorship these examples don't have to be like this crazy time where you spent months and months mentoring somebody but I definitely wanted to have a level of complexity where there was multiple meetings and you did multiple things to make sure this person or even team got better definitely a high high potential that you'll get one of these questions item seven training and development so this is actually threefold this is how you learn and grow by doing your own training and development how you get your team or teams the appropriate Learning and Development that they need and then lastly it's that application of what happened in the training to end development and what you did with it and so it might be as simple as you learned agile because that's how the engineering teams at your company work and you want it to be better at leadership and working with that in terms of how you got training for your team maybe they were using old access databases and you wanted to get them some training on sequel databases so that they could be more efficient and more strategic in their roles and then an application of training and development you might have done a colors workshop for example with your team and now you're actually applying those learnings you didn't just do the workshop and leave it aside you're actually taking those learnings and applying them and this training and development piece it's not that talked about but it could be an important component and this could come up as an interview question something in the training and development space it's it's a critical item for leads this was a pretty tricky subject and tricky video to film candidly because leadership is such a big topic and so I want you to watch other videos but the goal here is for you to have a few small takeaways where you might just think about leadership in a little bit different way and obviously I want you to prepare in a great method for those Google interviews thanks so much and good luck

Channel: Jeff H Sipe

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Keywords: google, google interview, google interview questions, google interview preparation, google interview process, google interview tips, google interview questions and answers, google interview prep, google leadership interview, google leadership principles, google leadership questions, google leadership principles interview questions, google leadership style, google leadership qualities, jeff h sipe, google interview process 2020, google job interview, google job interview process

Id: 1Wl42bEOn8w

Length: 11min 6sec (666 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 21 2020