The Google Resume Notes

Project-heavy courses are an excellent way to add tangible “accomplishments” to your résumé, even before you have the credentials to get “real” work experience. While other students are trying to dodge these rigorous courses, you should seek them out. You should cherish them for all the grueling, pizza-and-coffee-filled late nights that they bring. “Remember the projects you work on,” Peter Bailey, a software engineer from Denver, adds. “Understand them. Deconstruct them. Save samples of particularly tough problems you’ve solved. Improve them, even if only on your own machine and on your own time. Because in the future, interviewers will ask you many, many questions about the projects you’ve worked on. They don’t want to know that you’re smart. They don’t want to know that you can figure out anything with 30 seconds of Google time. They want to know that you can solve problems and produce results—sometime before Christmas. And this holds true whether you’re fresh out of college or a 20-year IT veteran.”

A good employee does everything that’s assigned to them; a great employee asks for more. Perhaps the best thing you can do to get a great next job is to do a great job in your current one:

• Think broadly. If you’re in an engineering role at a web-based company, is there additional debug information you can log? You probably (or hopefully) work with testers; how can you make their lives easier? The more people that you impact, the better your peer reviews will be and the more the company will value you.

• Be really, really good at what you do. This doesn’t mean that you have to double your time at work. Perhaps it’s merely a matter of shutting off other distractions, or perhaps it’s a matter of being extra careful.
• Solicit feedback proactively. Don’t wait until your midyear review to solicit feedback. At that point, your manager may be so overwhelmed that she writes your feedback hastily, at best. Asking for feedback early and frequently will demonstrate maturity, while also ensuring that you are able to quickly correct any issues.
• Learn about other teams. Understanding the broader context of the company’s roles will be useful when you want a more senior position; for example, if you’re a developer, learn about what program managers do. If you’re in sales, learn about marketing. Even a little bit of exposure will help you a lot. It’ll show you to what other roles are doing and how they all fit together.

The informational interview is an informal discussion with a company that is conducted before the recruiting process has even begun. Usually, you approach an employee of a prospective company and seek their advice about the role or company. Though it’s called an “informational interview,” don’t mention the word interview when you talk to the employee.

Part of the value of the informational interview is that it’s low pressure. An employee can meet with you and offer advice, regardless of whether the company is hiring. They get to “vet” you a bit, and you get to evaluate them and their company.

These informational interviews are very common across tech companies, both for external applicants and for internal candidates wishing to transfer teams.

Make sure to come with good, well-researched questions. The person will not be evaluating your skills extensively, but they will evaluate your personality, communication, and interest. Make sure to write a note thanking them for their time.

After this conversation, they may invite you to apply to their company and even offer to refer you. If not, you can follow up after the interview and ask them what the best way is to apply or to get in touch with a recruiter. If they don’t respond with an offer to help, then they are probably not comfortable doing so for whatever reason. You will simply need to use alternative avenues to apply for the position.

Before talking to Microsoft at the career fairs, students in the know would watch the line for a few minutes. Each employee had his or her own system. Some would put a little mark (which was at times as obvious as a smiley face) to indicate his invite/don’t invite decision. Others separated résumés into good and bad piles. Either way, an observant person could learn the system. It didn’t do them any good, of course, but it sure was nice to know the decision earlier.

Some candidates walk up with their elevator pitch all prepared: here’s who I am, here’s what I’ve done, here’s what I’m good at, and here’s what I’d like to do.

Other candidates walk up, hand a recruiter their résumé, and just wait for the recruiter to ask them questions. When asked what they want to do, they shrug. “Well, what kind of jobs do you have for my major?”

“When a candidate can’t tell me what they want to do, or what they even like doing, that’s when there’s not a good fit,” Raquel Garcia, a senior Microsoft recruiter, says. “Basically it’s like I’m giving you a ticket to go anywhere in the world, and you can’t even tell me what continent you want to go to.”

To maximize your chances of getting an interview invitation, follow these suggestions:

• Do your homework. Research the companies you’re interested in and know which roles you’d be a good fit for. What do they look for in candidates? How can you address those skills in your conversation with a recruiter?
• Prepare questions. Part of your job at a career fair is to show your passion for the company and the job. You should prepare a few open-ended questions to ask the company. This will facilitate conversation, as well as offer both you and the recruiter the chance to discover if there’s a good fit.
• Prepare answers. A company might ask you basic questions about your background. You should be able to talk intelligently about your biggest accomplishments and challenges.
• Practice your elevator pitch. The first 30 seconds with the staff at a career fair is your opportunity to impress. A strong candidate will be able to succinctly communicate their value-add.
• Tailor your résumé. There’s no rule that says you can bring only one copy of your résumé to a career fair. If you’re applying for different types of positions, create tailored résumés for each position.
• Dress appropriately. I once had a candidate wear a T-shirt to a career fair with a sexually themed phrase on it. If he can’t act appropriately at a first meeting, what will he be like on the job? Your attire at a career fair should be more or less the same as what you would wear to an interview.
• Follow up. If possible, get the business card or e-mail address from the person you talk to, and follow up immediately after the career fair. You should reiterate your interest in the company, explain what you’d bring to the company, and attach a copy of your résumé.

After speaking with hundreds of candidates at career fairs, most blend together in a giant mix of résumés. One candidate, however, stands out: Alex, a precocious sophomore, who brought a portfolio of his project work with him. On two additional sheets of paper, he provided screenshots of his four biggest projects, with lengthier explanations that would head off some of our questions: How did he build it? What did he enjoy? What did he learn? What was the hardest part?

Raquel Garcia loves it when younger students like Alex approach her. “Whenever a freshman comes up to talk to me, I always thank them for doing so. They showed guts in talking to me, and I appreciate that. And they get early feedback on how they can start shaping their career so that, in a year or two, they’re ready for Microsoft.”

Ever seen an advertising campaign that says, “A portion of our profits is donated to charity”? The convenient thing about that statement is that it could be 0.0001% and it’s still technically true. This is what I think about every time I see a résumé that says “reduced server latency” or “increased customer satisfaction.” If you really did this (and it had a remotely meaningful impact), why can’t you tell me how much?

For business roles, quantifying results with dollars will make the strongest impact. However, if this isn’t possible, you can instead quantify the results with change in employee turnover, reduction in customer support calls, or whatever metric is the most relevant. You may want to consider offering the percentage change in addition to (or sometimes instead of) the absolute change.

For technical positions, it may be more impactful to quantify some results in more technical terms: seconds of latency, number of bugs, or even an algorithmic improvement in big-O time. However, be careful to strike a balance here: while your accomplishments may be impressive to a fellow engineer, a less technical HR individual might be the one reviewing your résumé. You want to make sure that your résumé impresses everyone.

Example:

• Original: “Implemented crash reporter and used results to fix three biggest causes of crashes.”
• Newly quantified: “Implemented crash reporter and used results to fix three biggest causes of crashes, leading to a 45 percent reduction in customer support calls.”

Before, I understood that you did something reasonably important but I didn’t understand how important. The quantified revision, though, leaves me with a “wow!”

Many recruiters will toss your résumé away for a single typo. They figure that they have so many résumés to go through; why waste time on someone with poor communication skills?

Tech companies tend to be a bit more forgiving, due to their less formal atmosphere and as well as their large international workforce. However, that’s no excuse for sloppiness, particularly in communication-heavy roles.

Make sure to check your résumé thoroughly for the following potential issues:

• Conciseness. Avoid large blocks of text on your résumé; people hate reading, and will generally skip right over paragraphs. Your résumé should be a collection of bullets of around one to two lines.
• Spelling. With all due credit to Mrs. O’Connor, my fifth-grade teacher, here’s a useful tip to check spelling. Our minds have a tendency to read through spelling mistakes if we know what word to expect. Try checking for spelling mistakes by reading your résumé backwards.
• Grammar. You can use Microsoft Word’s grammar checker, but don’t rely exclusively on this. If you are not a native English speaker, make sure to have a native English speaker— one who is strong in grammar and spelling—review your résumé.
• Margins. You’re not fooling anyone with the 0.5-inch margins. Your margins should ideally be one inch, but certainly no less than 0.75 inch.
• Normal fonts. Use a standard font, like Times New Roman or Arial, and don’t use fonts smaller than 10 pt. Comic Sans is never acceptable.
• Consistency. You can use either commas or semicolons to separate items in a list, but be consistent. End either every bullet with a period, or none. Make sure that your formatting is consistent in terms of bold, underline, italics, and the like. Your formatting decisions are often not as important as being consistent with them.
• White space. Using ample white space will make your résumé easy to read. Recruiters have to deal with enough in their day; don’t add to strain with a crowded résumé.
• No first person. Although it can be tough, avoid using I, me, or myself. Use the third person throughout your résumé, with the exception of the objective statement, where first person is more expected.

While summaries can wow the reader, they’re usually so vague that they have no impact at all. Roy, an ex-Microsoft and current Google developer, says, “I would never look at a résumé and say, ‘Well, this person says he’s a go-getter. Let’s hire him.’ It’s like putting ‘Loves to Laugh’ on a Match.com dating profile. No one’s buying it.”

Your summary should read much more like key accomplishments—so much so, in fact, that these sections are often called “Summary and Key Accomplishments.”

The following objectives will demonstrate your value-add to the prospective company:

• “Software engineer lead with several years’ experience implementing large back-end systems in Java and C++, including three as a lead/team manager; led re-architecture of critical system that serves 50 million requests per month, reducing request latency by 20 percent; designed new API for financial product used by 5 of the 10 biggest banks, which accounted for an additional $10 million in revenue; awarded the prestigious ‘Green Sticker’ award, given to the top 5 percent of engineers based on total impact to firm.”
• “Program manager with five years of experience leading feature design of enterprise- oriented products; proposed solution and built team to solve number one cause of customer complaints, and completed project three months ahead of schedule; reduced development costs by 35 percent by creating plan to merge related products into one, more generalized product; oversaw integration of acquired technology by leading 17 developers and 9 testers from two companies, resulting in an additional $50 million of sales.”

Everyone has trouble shortening their résumé. You get attached to your accomplishments, and you just hate to see them wiped off. Try giving your résumé to a friend and ask him or her to cut items, line by line. What do you not need?

Or ask yourself these questions:

• Do you have more than three prior jobs listed, or 15 years of experience? If you are an experienced candidate, your résumé need not stretch back much more than 10 or 15 years. Stick to only what’s relevant.
• Do you need to talk so much about your older jobs? If you have an older job that you’d like to include because, say, the firm has a strong name brand, you only need to spend one bullet on the job. The space allocated per position does not need to match the number of years spent.
• Can you cut some of your college experience? Things like coursework and activities can often take up more space than they are worth. Remove these, unless they truly add a new perspective or accomplishment.
• What does your objective/summary add? Objectives and summaries often take up three or four lines of text and add very little. Most people could remove their objective and summary and lose very little.
• Is everything relevant? Discussing your love for traveling is very rarely relevant, nor is the fact that you think you have strong communication skills. Kill the fluff.
• Can I be more concise? Résumés should use bullets with, yes, incomplete sentences. If you have meaty paragraphs and blocks of text, these should be trimmed. You don’t need to provide all the details.
• Is this the best résumé format? Often, a different format can create much more space. Try experimenting with the format, but don’t shrink the font size down too much or remove all the white space. It’s there for a reason.

A cover letter is not a chance to tell your life story, nor is it a chance for you to list every accomplishment you’ve ever had. A cover letter should introduce you, demonstrate how your background matches the job description, and state your interest in the position.

When writing yours, keep these five suggestions in mind.

Want to move away from the boilerplate cover letter? Check out this A+ cover letter:

Dear Ms. Johnson,
I would like to request your consideration for the position of iPhone Game Developer, which I saw
advertised on CareerCup.com.

I was particularly excited to see an opening within the Swords team, as this is one of what I consider to
be the most addictive games. I’ve nearly uninstalled it from my phone but, well, I just couldn’t. While
the game play is fantastic as a whole, I’ve been particularly impressed with how the game leverages the
iPhone features to implement realistic collisions.

When I picked up the job description, I knew that not only was the position a perfect match for my
interests, but I was perfect match for its requirements. I have over three years of experience with writing
mobile games, and pride myself on having an artistic eye despite being “just” a developer. I would love
the opportunity to utilize both the artistic and the technical aspects of my brain. My games have been
shipped to three mobile platforms, with over 100,000 downloads on the iPhone itself.

Additionally, I place high value on the long-term maintainability of a code base, and have implemented
systems at my previous company to improve code quality. Most notably, I restructured our coding cycle
to match industry best standards. Gone were the days of bang-it-out; developers needed to write design
documents for any external APIs and have them peer reviewed by at least two people. All source must
be code reviewed before being checked in. Bugs at the “critical” level dropped 19 percent with the
implementation of this new system.

I think that Swords and I could have a wonderful working relationship; we’re compatible down to the
last little detail.

I look forward to talking with you more about this opportunity. Please contact me at 206-555-9323.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
Gayle Laakmann

Passion. Creativity. Initiative. Intelligence. And a “getting things done” attitude.

• Passion for technology. Passion for technology can be shown through your coursework, but it doesn’t end there. Do you read tech news sources? Do you use technology in your day-to-day life (beyond just e-mail and basic web browsing)? Are you interested in finding new ways to leverage or improve technology?
• Passion for the company. Do you know the company’s products? Do you use them? Why or why not? What would you improve?
• Creativity. When asked to design something from scratch, can you brainstorm lots of features you’d want? When you’re asking to solve a problem, do you think outside the box and push back on assumptions or constraints?
• Initiative. How have you gone above and beyond? Have you started a blog? A business? Organized a charity auction? Remember that initiative might be something as nontraditional as putting on a photography show.
• Getting things done. Regardless of where the idea came from, do you have a demonstrated ability to accomplish great things? Think beyond just your academic or professional work: what have you done outside of work?
• Intelligence. Your GPA can be one show of intelligence, but people with GPAs well below a 3.0/4.0 can and do get hired at the best tech companies. Intelligence can be “tested” through problem-solving questions, or hinted at through your résumé.

For at least the less technical aspects of an interview, preparation comes in three parts. You need to be able to answer questions about your prior work with illustrative examples. You need to understand the company so that you can tell your interviewer why you want to work there and what you’ll add. And, finally, you need to be able to ask interesting questions to your interviewer that demonstrate your research and interest.

At either the beginning or end of each question, your interviewer will give you a chance to ask questions. The quality of your questions will be a factor, whether subconsciously or consciously, in his decision. Ask open-ended questions that the person you’re interviewing with can tackle.

While some questions may come to you at the time (which is great), you can—and should— prepare 10 to 15 questions in advance. This will ensure that you have at least a few questions to ask every interviewer. Tip: You will usually be allowed to bring a “résumé notebook” with a pad of paper into your interview. You can jot down questions in advance there and refer to it.

Consider questions from the following three categories:

1. Genuine questions. These are the questions you actually want to know the answers to.

These questions might be:

• “How much of your day do you spend coding?” (if you’re an engineering candidate)
• “How many people are on the team? What’s the breakdown of different positions?”
• “What are the biggest issues facing the team?”
• “How does the decision process work? Who makes the final call? Who drives the decisions?”
• Insightful questions. These questions show that you’ve thought deeply about the issues

facing the team or company. Research you do in advance will come in handy here. For example:

• “Office has been aggressively pursuing an online strategy. Is this a play at the consumer

market to protect Microsoft from Google? Or is there a role in the business market as well, since that’s where Microsoft makes most of its money?”

• “Why did Google opt to use an open protocol for this product? Is it mainly a PR move,

or are there actually technology advantages? What sort of limitations is Google usually concerned with when leveraging open source?”

1. Passion questions. Passion questions are designed to show you as someone who is excited

about technology, about the company, or about learning. These questions include:

• “Though I don’t have a coding background, I love learning how software is

implemented. As an employee, what sorts of resources are there to do this?”

• “I’m not familiar with the technology you mentioned earlier. Could you tell me a bit

about it?”

• “Thinking back to people who have had this job in the past, what separates the

successful person from the unsuccessful?”

Because you are expected to do research prior to your interview, you should avoid asking questions that could have been easily looked up.

Additionally, remember that you will likely interview with HR, a manager, and teammates as well. What perspective can they each offer about the company?

Alternatively, you can be more direct and say: “I can elaborate on that if you’d like.” This is a good way of skipping over details in a story that an interviewer may or may not want to hear.

Keep an eye out for your interviewer glancing at their computer or phone. (If you’re on a phone interview, look for unusual silences.) This is a sign that they’re losing focus.

Don’t call them on it—it won’t earn you any points. Rather, try these tips:

• Vary your speech. Try varying the volume or tone of your speech. Speaking a bit louder or a bit quieter may be the kick needed to grab your interviewer’s attention. Or, if you can show some additional passion or enthusiasm in your voice, your interviewer might absorb some of this emotion.
• Tell a story. Minor changes in word choice can flip your response from a bland description of what happened to a memorable story. Consider the difference between “The servers were experiencing significant downtimes during peak ordering times, which made us lose money” and “I answered the phone to hear a customer screaming at us because our web site was down. As we looked into it, we discovered this was a widespread issue that caused our department to lose about $10,000 each month.” Adding action to the story will grab the listener’s attention, while quantifying the impact will ground what you’re saying in fact. Be careful not to go overboard, though—you don’t want to drown the person in details either.
• Talk less. Rather than giving all the aspects of a story, consider limiting yourself to just the important facts—that is, the things that are essential to understand what you did and why it mattered. Does the interviewer need to know that the coworker in your story is French? Unless the story is about a language barrier, probably not.
• Structure your responses. Ever listened to someone speak and ask yourself, “Where is this story going?” Sometimes this is because the person is talking too much, but sometimes it’s just due to a lack of structure. Picture your response as a set of bullets and sub-bullets—and use them while speaking! For example: “We had two major issues with this design: one, our customers are very cost-sensitive, and two, it would take too long to implement. As far as the first point, we believed that . . .” Hand gestures can help make the division between your points even clearer.

With all of this advice, remember the 80/20 Rule of Body Language. If your interviewer’s attention drifts, she’s probably just like that in general. Don’t lose hope or get discouraged, but do act on it.

Although post-interview thank you notes are essentially required in many interviews, they’re fairly unusual in tech companies. Howard Wu, a T-Mobile and former Amazon interviewer, estimated that he received thank you notes from fewer than 10 percent of his candidates. For engineering candidates, this number is probably closer to 1 percent.

Eric, a former Amazon interviewer, joked that “for tech companies, a thank you note is like wearing a suit to the interview. It’s out of place, and it looks like you’re trying to compensate for something.” While other people may be less negative, it’s generally agreed that a thank you note won’t help you. Feedback is usually submitted so quickly after your interview that you couldn’t impact their decision

However, a short note to your recruiter thanking her for coordinating your interview can certainly be nice. If you decide to send a thank you note, either to your recruiter or to an interviewer, they usually follow a format similar to the one below:

Dear John,
I wanted to thank you for your time today. I was particularly interested in the discussion we had about
the upcoming scalability and power constraints that the company is expected to soon face. I’ve been
interested in big system design for some time now, and I am eager to learn more about it.
During my time in college, I enrolled in several courses on distributed systems. My current position has
offered me an excellent foundation in designing reliable software, and I’ve continued to pursue my
interest in large system design through implementing various web automation projects during my free
time.
I feel confident that I can leverage my academic, professional, and “extracurricular” experience with
software development to make an impact on Google. I look forward to the opportunity to continue
discussions with the company.
Thanks again,
~Gayle

This sample thank you note does several things that you should look to replicate in your own letter:

• Specificity. While I could have borrowed the occasional sentence from a prior thank you note, the references to a specific discussion make it impossible for it to be completely cut- and-paste.
• Highlighting of skills. I’ve mentioned how my background has offered me the ability to learn about a major required skill set. For a job that’s potentially less relevant (implementing desktop software), I’ve highlighted how that actually is relevant to the position.
• Enthusiasm. I’ve explained why I’m interested in the position. I don’t need to go into a lengthy explanation—a brief mention will do.

If you’re sending multiple thank you notes to the same company, you should vary the format and word choice a bit. People talk.

Although recruiters should be proactive in updating you about your status, they deal with many candidates and sometimes people fall through the cracks. If you haven’t heard from your recruiter (and haven’t been given a timeline), feel free to e-mail your recruiter after about one week to check in. A simple note like this will suffice:

Hi Jamie,
I wanted to thank you for helping coordinate my interview last week, and I also wanted to check in
about my interview status. Do you know when I could expect an update?
Thank you!
~Gayle

If there’s no response, you can e-mail them after another three working days with a short note like:

Hi Jamie,
I just wanted to check in again. I understand you’re probably busy with other work, so I’ll probably just
give you a call tomorrow or the next day if I haven’t heard back from you before then.
Thanks!
~Gayle

For each offer a company gives out, a company rejects an average of 5 to 10 candidates. That means that, as a candidate, you can expect to get rejected—a lot. It may mean that the position was a poor match, it may mean that you didn’t prepare adequately, or it may mean that you just had bad luck.

In the unfortunate case that a company does not extend you an offer, the important thing at this point is to not burn bridges. Companies will usually let you reapply within six months to a year, and a positive relationship with your recruiter is critical for doing this. Try to offer a polite response like, “OK, well I’m sorry to hear that, but thank you very much for the opportunity. I really enjoyed the experience, and I hope to be able to revisit it down the road.”

You can also try asking for feedback. It’s unlikely that they’ll give you feedback, but you will increase your chances if you focus your question in a positive way. That is, the question “Do you have any suggestions as to what I should focus on in my future preparation?” is more likely to get a response than “What did I do poorly?”

While some advice is topic specific, communication skills are more universal. Your communication style will both directly and indirectly impact your performance, so keep this advice in mind:

• Don’t interrupt. Listen fully to your interviewer’s question. Interruptions can not only be offensive but suggest poor communication skills. You may also not understand the actual question if you only listen to half of it.
• Clarify ambiguity. Many candidates feel so pressured to blurt out an answer immediately that they start stumbling through an answer. Pretty soon, they wind up at the interview equivalent of a dark dead-end alley. Imagine, for example, you’re given an interview question like, “We’re considering launching a new product in China. How would you evaluate this decision?” Whether the product is software, a service, or some other variant can drastically change the response. You may assume one, whereas your interviewer assumed another. When you get a question, think through anything that’s ambiguous and clarify it. Not only will this help you give a better answer, but your interviewer might be intentionally testing whether you clarify ambiguity. This is an important skill, both on the job and in interviews!
• Talk out loud. Because interview questions are really about your approach, not getting the right answer, solving questions out loud is very important. Taking a few moments to think silently is fine, but you should verbalize most of your thought process. This has an added benefit of enabling your interviewer to steer you in the right direction periodically, enabling you to arrive at an optimal answer more quickly.

As our Microsoft recruiting coordinator, Erin, said, the thesis of your interview, and therefore this question, is why the company should hire you. She goes on to say that you should “understand what motivates you and let that shine through—unless it’s money.”

The key to this question is answering it in a way that boosts your chances. It’s all about your motivations and skills. Think about the skill sets for the job or the area you’ll be working in. What excites you? Do you love working with people? Are you fascinated by tough algorithm problems? Do you want to make an impact? Try to keep your answers as specific as possible to the company or even the team. You might even consider mixing in some comments about your background and how the company is a great match for that.

This is also a great time to flex all the research you’ve done about the company. Here’s a great response for an engineering position at Google:

There are two major reasons. First, I’m really interested in the design of large systems. I’ve
taken a lot of courses on distributing systems and explored this for my senior project. I feel
Google is the best place to deepen my knowledge in this area. But, second, and perhaps more
importantly, I really believe that the most important thing for any job is to make sure that
you’re learning a lot. Whereas at many companies you really learn only about your own
team, at Google, employees seem to be encouraged to transfer teams, to share knowledge
across teams, to do tech talks about their team’s architecture, etc. I can’t think of any place
where I’d learn more than at Google.

One of my standard opening questions was, “What brings you here today?” A candidate could answer many ways. They could explain why they were leaving their current job. They could tell me why the new position was exciting to them. Or the more literal candidate could joke and say “a car,” as one candidate, in fact, did.

One unfortunate candidate took the opportunity to rant about her current position. Her work was boring and tedious. Her teammates were too negative and critical. Her boss was sexist and wouldn’t promote her. She wasn’t learning enough. On and on and on. I dutifully noted her reasons and progressed with more technical questions, which she breezed through. When we discussed her interviewing feedback later, we discovered that all her interviewers noted the same negativity.

Perhaps she had an unfortunate position with her team, but her willingness to flaunt such hostility showed a lack of professionalism and suggested a general negative demeanor. We rejected her—she could have been toxic to the culture.

No matter how bad your situation is, stay positive. Focus on what you’re excited about doing at this new position:

My current position has been great in certain ways. It’s taught me a lot about
communication, negotiations, and how to manage many clients at once. However, new client
acquisition is so highly prioritized at my company that I don’t have the opportunity to
develop more lasting relationships with clients. I’m looking for an opportunity where I can
do this.

Assuming that the new position matches this requirement, this would be an excellent response.

This question can be stated in many alternative or related ways: “What skills do you think you bring?,” “What do you see your role here being?,” and so on. Your response to this question should focus on a few core (related) skills or attributes that you think you offer. Aim for exactly three; fewer than three seems weak, more than three loses the interviewer’s focus. Back up each with a short amount of evidence.

Example: “I understand that one of your company’s core issues has been improving the server uptime. I think I could make a large impact on this issue, for three reasons. First, my current position has offered me a deep background in efficient server programming, which would be valuable on this project. Second, I recognize that this problem requires working with several teams simultaneously, and I have been playing this intermediary role in my current position. Third, I’ve spent my spare time profiling various open source projects for their memory usage, and this experience has exposed me to a variety of tools and techniques for optimization.”

You’re probably great at many things, but you want to pick a set of three skills that are most relevant to the job and provable, while also being unique. “Intelligence,” for example, is probably very applicable as well as provable, but it’s also so common that it’s bland. A better set of strengths are things like communication skills, energy, creativity, working well under stress, motivating others, and so on. When you state each one of these, try to cite a specific example. For instance:

I think there are three core strengths. First, I have strong communication skills that have been refined through five years of prior teaching experience. Second, I’m a very creative person. Whether it’s writing new song lyrics for my band or designing a novel interface, I’m able to find unique solutions to problems. Third, I am passionate about learning. I recently finished up a certificate in psychology at the local university, and I’m starting a new program now in art history. I may never directly apply this education, but I love learning new things.

Many years ago, someone started a vicious rumor that your weaknesses should be strengths in disguise: “I think one of my biggest weaknesses is that I work too hard. I just don’t know when to stop!” No, really, stop.

Weaknesses should be genuine weaknesses, but not so bad that they’re damning. My personal (and honest) answer for this question when I am interviewed is the following: I think I have three main weaknesses. First, I sometimes lack an attention to detail. While this is somewhat good in that it enables me to execute quickly, it also means that I can make careless mistakes. I have learned that I need to double or triple check important work before submitting. Second, I am a very quantitative person, and sometimes I can lose sight of the personal aspect of a decision—whom it impacts and why. I’ve learned the hard way that I need to consider who all the stakeholders are in a decision, and how they’ll react. Third, I am too critical of my own ideas and sometimes those of others. I’ve largely masked this by focusing on offering positive feedback, but I know I have some room to improve my internal reactions.

No one would claim that my weaknesses are good things, but would they disqualify me from a position? Probably not, though it does depend on the position (a motivational coach is probably out of the question for me!).

In your weaknesses, be sure to minimize them by showing how you’re working on improving them, or how you’ve managed to negate the issues (such as I do by double checking my work). Additionally, make sure you can back up your weaknesses with concrete examples. If you can’t, they probably aren’t weaknesses.

Behavioral interview questions are usually structured in the form of “tell me about a time when you . . .” and may ask for examples from specific roles or projects. Interviewers are looking for four key attributes:

1. Résumé verification. It’s easy to carefully wordsmith your résumé such that it’s not

technically lying, but it certainly magnifies your accomplishments. This sort of exaggeration is more challenging when unexpected questions are lobbed at you, and you must come up with examples from your experience.

1. Getting things done. The best predictor of future performance is past performance, so

interviewers want to understand the issues you have faced and how you’ve tackled them. In this case, the specific issues you’re asked about will likely relate to the position. For a management or team lead position, you’ll likely be asked about leadership or about working with struggling employees.

1. Personality and culture fit. Your responses to behavioral questions reveal something

about your personality. It shows whether you’re the type of person who takes charge through analysis or through building relationships, or whether you’re outspoken or soft spoken. No one personality trait is inherently better than another, but some might be a better fit for the company culture.

1. Communication. Can you respond “off the cuff” in a clear and concise way? Is your

communication structured, or do you ramble? Do you speak in an interesting and engaging manner?

SAR (Situation, Action, Result) is an effective way to structure responses to behavioral and other questions in a way that clearly explains what the problem was, what you did, and what the result was. Question: “Tell me about a challenging interaction with a teammate.”

• The Situation should include a brief description of the problem. Provide enough details so

that the reader can understand what the problem was, but don’t offer much more. On my last project, I was asked to oversee the work of a man who was much older than me. He was working too independently from the rest of my team and not keeping us informed, and this ended up introducing a lot of conflicting work. When I went to discuss the issues with him, he blew up at me—screaming that he had been working since before I was even born.

• The Action describes what you did. It’s generally the most important part of the story.

I left the room to let him calm down, and talked to another teammate. She told me that he was actually just very insecure. When I came back the next day, I approached it from the perspective of his helping me. I asked him to help me with understanding his approach, saying that I needed it for some work I was doing. I then checked in on him regularly, explaining that I was confused about how to design some of my work and asked to see what he was doing. This enabled me to refocus some of his work, by asking some questions about how he would deal with specific problems.

• The Result explains what happened, and sometimes what you learned from it.

Because I never told him he was doing things wrong, he never felt attacked. I merely asked questions and told him when I was confused. With this approach, I was able to stay informed about what he was doing, and gently guide him in the right direction. He was no longer a drain on our team’s productivity.

Note how I skipped over a lot of details; I never explained what the project was or what the conflicting work was. It’s not relevant to this story.

Design questions range from the normal (“How would you design a To Do list manager?”) to the abnormal (“How would you design an alarm clock for the deaf?”), and are common for many positions, especially program/product managers. They often focus on specific markets: children, deaf people, blind people, and so on.

Object-oriented design (OOD) questions come in two flavors: OOD for a piece of software and OOD for a real-world object. Despite the seemingly huge difference between these topics, they’re approached much the same way:

1. What are your goals? Imagine, for example, you are asked to design the classes for a

generic deck of cards. What kind of cards? Are they standard playing cards, UNO cards, or some other kind? Just how “generic” is it supposed to be?

1. What are the core objects? For example, if you’re doing the OOD for a restaurant, your

core objects might be Restaurant, Patron, Party, Host, Server, Busser, Table, and so on. Each of these will become a class.

1. How do the objects relate to each other? There is probably only one Restaurant, so this

can be a singleton class. Restaurant has many Servers, one Host, many Bussers, many Tables, many Parties, and many Patrons. (Note: This is just an assumption; talk to your interviewer about this). Each Table has one Server and one Party. Look for and remove redundancies. For example, Restaurant may not need a list of Patrons, since it can get that from the list of Parties.

1. How do the objects interact? Think about what the major actions that occur in the

restaurant are. For example, a Party makes a Reservation with a Host. The Host sits the Party at a Table and assigns them a Server. Each of these actions should generally correspond to one or more methods. By walking through these methods, you may discover that you missed some objects or that your design isn’t quite right. That’s OK—now is a great time to add them!

1. Are there any tricky algorithms? In some cases, there may be an algorithm that impacts

the design. For example, implementing findNextReservation(int partySize) might require some changes to how the reservations are referenced. Discuss these details with your interviewer.

Remember that object-oriented design questions require a lot of communication with your interviewer about how flexible your design should be and how to balance certain trade-offs. There is no “right” answer to an object-oriented design question.

When I interviewed at Google, I didn’t know a thing about large systems. Sure, I’d taken a distributed computing course where we studied election algorithms and whatnot, but that had nothing to do with what I was asked. Sort a million numbers? Design a web crawler? Yikes!

I fumbled my way through the problem, and I realized I could do this just fine. Once I forgot that I had no idea what I was doing, I learned that I actually understood the primary complexities of large amounts of data and dealing with multiple systems at once.

All I needed to do was take things step by step. Imagine, for instance, that we’re designing a hypothetical system X for millions of items (users, files, etc.):

1. How would you solve the problem for a small number of items? Develop an algorithm for this case, which is often pretty straightforward.
2. What happens when you try to implement that algorithm with millions of items? It’s likely that you have run out of space on the computer. So, divide up the files across many computers.
3. How do you divide up data across many machines? That is, do the first 100 items appear on the same computer? Or all items with the same hash value mod 100?
4. About how many computers will you need? To estimate this, ask how big each item is, and take a guess at (or ask your interviewer) how much space a typical computer has.
5. Now, fix the problems that occur when you are using many computers. Make sure to answer the following questions:
6. How does one machine know which machine it should access to look up data?
7. Can data get out of sync across computers? How do you handle that?
8. How can you minimize expensive reads across computers?

Testers have many names: tester, software design engineer in test, software test engineer, quality assurance, and hey-you-over-there-why-doesn’t-this-work. These titles can mean slightly different things depending on the company.

Whatever you call them, testers have a raw deal; not only do they have to master the coding questions, but they also must master testing questions. They must practice coding, algorithms, and data structures on top of the all usual testing problems. If you’re a tester, do yourself a favor and make sure to practice coding—it’s an excellent way to set yourself apart.

True testing questions usually fall into one of three categories:

1. How would you test this real-world object?
2. Explain how you would test this piece of computer software.
3. Test a method (possibly one that you just wrote).

While all the standard interview advice (be concise, create questions to ask, etc.) applies equally to gaming advice, some advice is more specific to this field. The following three tips are especially important in gaming interviews, though they may be more broadly applicable as well.

1. Play the Game

Perhaps the best part of interviewing with a game company—other than getting a crack at giant version of the flagship games—is that your interview preparation is playing games. After all, you have to research any company before your interview. What better way to do that than to play its games?

While playing these games, be sure to think about the following questions:

• What are you impressed by?
• What makes it fun?
• What would you change in the next version?

In your answers to these questions, pay particular attention to anything that’s relevant to your job title.

1. Show Confidence (but Not Too Much)

Because game companies move so fast, it’s important that a candidate understand her skill set, and understand how it can be applied. “A candidate should be able to say ‘I’ve done A, B, and C, and I know that I can do D,’” says Katy Haddix, a VonChurch recruiter. You need enough self- confidence to know that you can do something new, but not so much that you turn off your

teammates.

1. Be Likable

Long hours make likability an essential trait, and even the least chatty person can apply a few tricks to make herself more sociable:

• Smile. Even if it’s a phone interview, smiling will come through in your voice. In fact, not only does smiling make you appear happier, it actually makes you happier.
• Laugh. Laughing suggests to your interviewer that you like to have a good time and are fun to be around. Pay attention to how your interviewer acts, and mimic him. If he’s more serious, then perhaps you should follow his lead.
• Be agreeable. Being a complete pushover won’t help you in your interview, but you don’t want to be argumentative either. You should assert your opinions while going out of your way to listen to your interviewer. Remember: the interviewer is always right. Stubborn candidates should make a special effort to keep this element under wraps.

However, while likability and sociability is important, that’s no excuse for being unprofessional. Off-color comments have no place in an interview.

As my mother said, offers are complex. They include a salary, bonus, raises, vacation days, health care, and so on—and that’s just the financial side. You also must consider your career direction, the company culture, your future teammates, and potentially even the feelings of a spouse or significant other. Then, to really muddy the waters, you rarely have all the information (How many hours will you be working? What are annual raises like?).

The complexities of an offer usually can be broken down into the following categories:

• Career development. Is this the right decision for your career? Will the job look good on your résumé? Will it help you progress in your career?
• Financial package. How much are they paying you? What are the perks (health care, stock, etc.) worth?
• Happiness. Will you enjoy the job? Will you get along with your teammates? Is the location where you want to live?

I can’t tell you what the right decision is, but I can help you dissect an offer so that you can make the right decision for you.

When you get an offer, the first thing you should do is to thank the company for their time and to reiterate that you are confident that you can do an excellent job. The second thing you should do is open the negotiations. Following these tips will ensure more positive results:

1. Don’t name the first number. The first person to name a number can overshoot too much and turn off the other person (“He offered that?!? What’s the point in even discussing it!”), or, even worse, might lowball himself. Whenever possible, avoid giving the recruiter a salary range by saying that there are many factors you evaluate in a job and that it’s difficult to provide a range. You may even be able to tactfully avoid giving your prior salary by stating that your company does not permit disclosure of salaries.
2. Have a viable alternative. You can claim that you are really excited about doing system administration for your brother’s company, but Google probably won’t buy it. However, if you tell Google that Microsoft is offering you $5k more, you can bet that Google will feel much more threatened that they’ll lose you. Also, don’t forget to take location into account. It’s perfectly reasonable to tell Google that while their salary is $1,000 higher than Microsoft’s, it’s effectively much lower with the cost-of-living difference.
3. Do your research. By being armed with data about industry salary and what your company offers to similar candidates, you’ll have a much better idea of what is reasonable to ask for and what isn’t. Check out web sites like Glassdoor.com to research salary ranges.
4. Have a specific “ask.” If you ask a recruiter for just “more salary,” they’re likely to bump up your salary by an insignificant amount, putting you in the uncomfortable position of needing to ask again. Instead, you should approach your recruiter with specific demands: salary of $X, signing bonus of $Y, and so on.
5. Overshoot. The salary that you request acts as a ceiling: the most a company would have to pay you for you to accept their offer. A recruiter is likely to shoot for somewhere between the initial offer and what you ask for, so you should overshoot by a bit. But don’t go overboard; asking for a $200k salary in your first year out of college just makes you come across as unreasonable.
6. Use your best medium. Many people will insist that negotiations take place over the phone. If you’re comfortable doing so, then by all means, pick up the phone and call the recruiter. But if you’re not—if you think you might get bullied into accepting a subpar offer—then stick to e-mail, where you can tweak every word.
7. Sell yourself. Though you’ve gotten the offer, you need to continue to sell yourself. A recruiter who thinks you’re working with them (rather than just griping about every penny), who enjoys your personality, and who thinks that you’ll add value to the company will do more to get you there.

And remember: if and when the company agrees to your terms (or you to theirs), the negating is done. You cannot go back and ask for more. You should tell them how excited you are to join them, and always, always ask for the offer in writing.

How you communicate with your recruiter or manager is a sign of your professionalism. Are you cognizant of the time and effort they spend recruiting, or do you think that recruiting is all about you? By being open with your recruiter about your other pending offers and your feelings about the job, you can avoid catching her off-guard. Recruiters just hate surprises—or at least they hate bad ones anyway.

Your request for a raise should be backed up with solid reasons, and “Sally needs braces” is not a reason. Reasons include your accomplishments and what you’ve done for the company. If you can quantify your contributions in a dollar amount, that’s even better. What company wouldn’t fight to retain someone who was contributing millions to the company?

If you have coworkers who have been through this process and that you can confide in, you may want to consider asking them for their advice. They may be able to direct you on what people actually value or don’t value. This may be different from what the company states publicly. For instance, many companies state that they value employees mentoring new employees. The company likely recognizes that mentorship is important in general, but this doesn’t mean that it’s strongly weighted during the performance evaluation process.

Finally, much like in the offer negotiation process, you should shoot for more than what you can realistically expect. The company is more likely to meet you in the middle than to give you everything you ask for.

Your boss said no? Don’t despair—that’s common. Instead of just walking out of her office, ask her what would need to change to get the promotion or raise. Is it the company’s financial situation? Do you need to take on more leadership responsibilities? What specifically would that entail?

Follow up this conversation with an e-mail summarizing this information. Then, the next time you ask for a promotion or raise, you can cite how you’ve done everything she’s asked for.

If the issue is that the company simply can’t afford it, consider alternative ways that the company could reward you. Perhaps they could let you work from home one day per week?

Finally, if your chances of getting a promotion or raise look poor for the foreseeable future, perhaps you should consider finding a new position—outside the company. What’s the point of sticking around if there are no additional rewards for you?

If you’ve ever had a job you hated, you’ve probably dreamed of quitting in some epic way. A public memo citing everything your boss did wrong. Spelling “I Quit” with spaghetti on the cafeteria floor. Borrowing the most annoying children of your friends to run wild around the office. It would be refreshing and—hopefully, I don’t need to tell you this—incredibly stupid. Even if you don’t intend to have some massive blowout quitting ceremony, your departure is still likely to be a sensitive time, and it’s all too easy to burn bridges. It’s too small a world out there to do that; you may need your coworkers for references, or you might even end up working with them down the road.

To avoid leaving a foul taste in their mouths, do the following:

• Give sufficient notice. Two weeks is considered a bare minimum, but depending on the importance of your role and the situation, longer might be appropriate. At a small company, extra time may be appropriate due to the difficulty of finding someone to fill in.
• Find an appropriate time. Leaving halfway through a project or just before a deadline should be avoided, where possible. Ideally, you should leave as a project ends or even right when a project is beginning.
• Voice concerns early. If you’re leaving because of specific things about the company you don’t like, particularly if these are changeable, voice these concerns early. It’s in your best interest to give your boss a chance to fix things.
• Tell your manager first. As tempting as it may be, don’t tell anyone that you’re leaving until your manager knows. It could get very ugly if he hears it from someone else first.
• Leave on a positive note. Work extra hard in your final days to make sure that your work is wrapped up or at least passed on to an appropriate person. You’ll be remembered fondly for putting in the additional effort.

If you’re leaving to go to a direct competitor, you should be aware that you might be walked out immediately without being given the chance to finish out even two weeks. During my time in Google’s Seattle office, where many of the hires came directly from Microsoft, I would estimate that about half of them were escorted off the premises the day they gave their notice. Take a lesson from them and have your desk discreetly cleared out before you talk to your manager.

When I left Google, I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do next. People thought I was crazy to not have a specific job lined up. I wasn’t. I wanted to take several months to travel, work a bit on some side projects, and then find a start-up to join. Eventually. Once I found one I liked enough. I was in no rush.

There are some downsides, of course, to not finding a job first. First, you may lose some negotiating leverage if you’re desperate for a job. Second, you might not be able to afford taking several months off without pay, and you may therefore get pressured into taking a mediocre new job. Third, if it takes you unexpectedly long to find a new job, extended unexplained gaps in your résumé can look suspicious.

However, looking for a job once you’re unemployed has its perks. Namely:

• No pressure. If you’re unhappy at your current job, you may be pressured to take something—anything—else. Once you’ve left, you don’t need to be in any rush to find something new. After all, a job means no more vacation.
• Search openly. Once you’ve left, you can publicly post to Facebook, Twitter, your blog, or wherever, that you’re looking for a new job. There’s no need to hide your job search from your friends, or even your (former) coworkers, and some might know about the perfect position for you.
• Extended vacation. No more worrying about using up your precious 15 days of paid time off. Now you can take that extended vacation to Europe (or, in my case, South America).
• Unlimited time. Interviewing for a new position while holding down a current job is tricky. There are only so many “doctor’s appointment” excuses you can use before your manager starts to think that you’re suffering from some terminal illness. Once you’re unemployed, however, you can probably spare some of your suntanning-by-the-pool days for interviews without the lifeguard getting suspicious.

This is all predicated on being able to afford to take time off. Even if you’re not too picky, it could easily take six weeks or more to land and start a new job. If you can’t afford to take at least three months off without breaking the bank, you probably do not want the pressure of unemployment.

Though the cost of a Master of Business Administration (MBA) is quite similar to other graduate programs, the benefits and goals are radically different. For starters, the MBA is a professional degree program. You don’t enroll in an MBA because you really want to study a specific dialect of marketing; that’s what PhDs in marketing are for. You’re not studying for an MBA because you love school; if you tell the admissions officers that, it’s a pretty good way to ensure your rejection. An MBA is a career move.

For almost as long as MBAs have been around, people have debated whether it’s worth it. Not surprisingly, people with MBAs say that it definitely pays off; those without say you don’t need it. The truth is that it depends. It depends on you, your goals, your background, your MBA program, and, well, dumb luck.

However, what you will potentially get out of an MBA is the following:

• Education. You will learn a bit about every aspect of business, including marketing, management, finance, and accounting. Understanding each of these areas even at a cursory level can make you more ready to lead a business or business unit. Additionally, during the course of an MBA, you study a broad spectrum of companies, and you begin to develop patterns of analyzing business issues.
• Experiences. MBAs are filled with opportunities to lead clubs, conferences, or trips. After all, MBAs are about training the future leaders; it’s no wonder they have lots of leadership opportunities. You will also have the chance to attend talks from business leaders around the world.
• Credibility. There are certainly those who don’t believe in the value of an MBA, but for most people, an MBA from Harvard, Stanford, Wharton (University of Pennsylvania), Sloan (MIT), or Kellogg (Northwestern University) means something. If you previously have an engineering background (as many MBAs do), an MBA will show that you’re more than just the typical engineer.
• Network. Your classmates will have similar career goals as you (to be really successful in business), but will spread out across fields, industries, and countries. That gives you a broad network of experienced professionals. Need to talk to someone in a senior position in consumer products? Done. Your network is more than just the people you meet; you can also reach out to the full alumni network. When you share this alumni connection, people are much more willing to pick up the phone.