Behavioral Questions Ho… 43200 minutes
Question - 1 SCORE: 30 points
Elevator pitch
Write a few lines about yourself. Speak those lines aloud and
time it to about a minute. The paragraph you write should be
succinct and should describe yourself properly.
A pitch should have:
1. Focus
2. Something exciting to say
3. Last line should say something about what you are looking for
This is a chance to sell and showcase yourself, though not
brashly. This is not a place to be modest. Quantify as many
things as you can.
Some more examples:
1. "My name is Mia. I am a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon,
specializing in Cloud Computing. I previously interned at Google
and Microsoft. I'm looking for a fulltime role at a company that
interfaces with hardware and software"
2. "Hi, I'm Praveen. I work as network protocol engineer at
Ericsson. I have deep interest in the area and have authored two
papers on it. I'm looking to branch out into application level
engineering"
3. "Hi, I'm Manan. I'm a DBA by profession. I held Oracle
certifications back in the day. My most recent experience has
been with MongoDB in a 24/7 environment with a peak QPS of
25000. I am also very comfortable with managing MySQL and
have managed a hybrid environment of 150 instances. I'm
looking to go to a place which has a mix of NoSQL and SQL
environments"
Question - 2 SCORE: 20 points
Challenging project
Describe your current project (or describe a challenging project
you have worked on).
If there are multiple such projects, then pick a project that:
1. You know very well
2. Had at least one challenge; could have been a difficult bug,
difficult design, too many stakeholders, strong business
challenge etc.
3. You are excited to show off
4. (Preferable) Is successful and relatively recent
In your description, go in this order:
1. Give some business context; why did that project exist?
2. What was the main design?
3. What was your role in it?
4. What was the problem, what made it challenging?
5. What did you learn from it (very important)
You can write this as long as you want. Expect about 30 hour of
discussion, including follow up questions.
Question - 3 SCORE: 20 points
Leave and join
Why do you want to leave your current role and join Google?
Write the answer specifically for Google. Shouldn't take more
than 1 minute of reading time. i.e. about 8-10 sentences.
Guideline
* Never say anything negative about your current or past
employer, manager or team. Even if it’s true.
* Unless your pay is horribly low, never say you were not paid
enough.
* Examples of good reasons:
- “There isn't enough career growth”,
- “I want a change”,
- “I want to do more coding”,
- “I wanted to work more intensely with technology X” etc.
* Cite a certain specific open-source project that the company
has worked on. Or a group of such projects.
* Do ample research on the company. More the better.
* Find the things the company is proud of, understand those
aspects, and connect with them. Is it technical prowess? Is it
culture? Is it cloud? Is it awesome UI?
Question - 4 SCORE: 20 points
Questions to ask
List the questions you'll ask the interviewers at the end of the
interview.
Guideline
* This is your chance to interview the company.
* You should be ready with revealing, probing questions.
* Yes, ask even if you are tired.
* Ask your questions even if you are bored.
* It's OKAY to ask the same question to everyone. Just admit that
before asking.
Some good questions to ask:
1. What is your development process?
2. What is your release process?
3. What is your typical day like?
4. What do you like about working here? What don't you?
5. What is the culture of this place like?
Be ready for a conversation, not just one question and answer. A
conversation is a proxy to curiosity.
Question - 5 SCORE: 10 points
Strengths and weaknesses
What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses?
Strengths: It's difficult to mess this up. But you have to think
about it beforehand. If you go unprepared, you'll likely miss
things to say.
Weaknesses: It's a stupid question. But you don't make them
feel like they have asked a stupid question. Answer it as
seriously as you can. Some discussion
here: http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-good-answers-to-
the-question-What-is-your-greatest-weakness
Guidelines:
* Don’t laugh the question off
* Preface it with “everyone has weaknesses”
* Don’t convert a strength into a weakness on extreme e.g. "I
work too hard" is not a good answer
* Spin it to something technical e.g. I'm not good at UI. Don't
trivialize UI, but just say that it's your limitation. Also say that
you can make basic UI, but you won't ever be able to build a
career in that. That shows humility.
* Always end it with what you're doing to get better at it. That
shows you are not lazy
Question - 6 SCORE: 10 points
Resolving conflicts
Give an example where you had a conflict in the past with your
Manager/Co-worker. Tell us how you handled it.
Guideline
* Conflicts are disagreements on design decisions or process
decisions.
* Discuss the method of handling that disagreement, and not the
outcome. It doesn't matter if you won or lost. What matters is
how you handled it.
* Usually, the process of handling conflicts involves things like:
- Respectful negotiation
- Respectful debate
- Gathering data patiently over time
- Gathering consensus
- Escalation
* You could preface your reply with: "At work, we're encouraged
to debate a solution, because that's how best ideas come to the
fore. Debating is the key thing that separates a high performing
team vs. a mediocre team"
* Give more context in the answer e.g. If it were a design-
decision conflict, give a higher-level view of how far the project
was and why it was important to make that decision. If it were a
process conflict, then explain a bit about what the process did.
Don't spend too much time on giving context. A minute is
enough.
* Emphasize on what you learnt. Win or lose, it should come
across as a "humbling" experience.
* Things to avoid:
- Avoid discussing resented or inconclusive conflicts.
- Avoid saying there was never a conflict. That is open to a lot of
misinterpretation
- Avoid saying you have a lot of such incidences to report.
Question - 7 SCORE: 10 points
Passion?
What is your passion? What do you do outside work? How do you
de-stress?
Guideline:
* You must have SOMETHING to say. Be it technical or otherwise.
* Watching movies is not a passion, unless you are a blogger or a
media star.
* Playing with Kids is OKAY, but qualify it with "I'm very
interested in child-development or education"
* Your eyes should light up when you talk about it.
Question - 8 SCORE: 30 points
Resume
Look at your resume and make sure you can answer questions
about every project and every technical skill there.
Feel free to partition your technical skills by familiarity
e.g
* Currently working on: Scala
* 2 years ago: Java
* Long ago: C++
* Hobby coding: Lua
Or, something like the following:
* Expert: Backbone.js, AngularJS, JQuery
* Past my learning curve: NodeJS
* Casual: CSS
Question - 9 SCORE: 10 points
Manager
What will your manager tell me about you?
It's difficult to fake an answer to this question. It's often
preceded by asking details of your current manager. But it pays
to be thinking about it beforehand, because it forces
introspection.
