Was invited to an on-Campus interview at a Career fair at my University
1. Interview (On-Campus) 30mins. with recruiter (only personal fit questions)
Extremely positive experience, probably the most relaxed interview I have ever been in (coming from Management Consulting I've been through quite a few).
Recruiter explicitly made an effort to "just have a little chat about life at Google" and the specific role as Account Strategist.(Though I didn't buy too much into the "just relax" atmosphere and tried to stay focused on the inside)
Q1: Why Google?
Q2: What qualities would you bring to the team?
Q3: What are your mid/long-term professional expectations?
Q5: Could you imagine working & living in Dublin?
Q6: How do you deal with a high-pressure working environment? Additionally a couple of specific questions about my CV, what I did in different jobs/internships etc...
Again: very open conversation, she also told me a lot about life at Google in general and seemed very enthusiastic and endowed with a positive-attitude which actually motivated me even more, as I initially was a bit skeptical about the position. As our conversation was very pleasant, she invited me to an on-site interview right on the spot for the upcoming week.
Called me next day, confirmed invitation to on-site interview and forwarded me all details I needed to know via mail.
7 working days after initial contact, arrived in Dublin, 3 hours time between arrival and beginning of interviews. Was greeted by the recruiter who had invited me who briefly showed me around the building and once again made a big effort to make the experience as pleasant as possible.
Interview with two people: AdWords Manager & one recent hire: (40mins)
(The manager asked all the questions, while the staff member only listened and took notes)
Q1: Walk me through your CV, highlighting the most impt. and relevant points!
Q2: What brings you here today, why do you want this job?
Q3: What kind of expectations do you have of this job and where do you see yourself in 10 years (I hate this question, how should I know?)
Q4: Scenario: online shoe retailer, repair & service wants to increase e-commerce and repair services, what advice would you provide?
Q5: How would you convince a small business owner to invest into online marketing? Why should he/she use AdWords? What other solutions from Google's product range could be offered? (Mock sales pitch)
Q6: Say you have a customer portfolio of 3000 individual customers, how would you prioritize your tasks?
Q7: We have many excellent people applying, what makes you stand out? Why should we want you on the team?
2. Interview with one person: Sales Manager (35 mins)
Q1: Do you want something to drink?
Q2: Do you want to ask questions first, or do you want to go through a couple of my questions and then ask me questions?
Q3: First Scenario: You just bought 10000 Tablet computers in Taiwan and shipped them to (insert any European country). You want to get rid of them asap via online sales using AdWords - determine CPC! (Walk me through the process on the white board, providing numerical examples)
Q4: A customer complains about diminishing ROI in online sales, determine possible causes and provide solutions respectively.
Q5: Provide 5 examples of how you would decrease CPC as a business owner.
Q6: Within one week online sales have suddenly decreased more than 50%, why? What are possible causes?
Q7: Can you imagine working on problems similar to the ones above on a daily basis? Would you enjoy this?
3. Interview with two people: Team-Lead & another recent hire (45 mins)
Again many standard personal fit questions, very detailed questions regarding CV, past time challenges, leadership and conflict situations at work.
4. Next working day, call from recruiter updating me that I had passed. Informed me about the next steps (Hiring Committee) and provided - to my surprise - already all details about the employment package. At this point I found this a little early, as it made the impression that I had already received an offer - even though my data still had to go through the hiring & exec. committees’ review process. Additionally asked me about any other offers I may currently have and what they were.
Sent in all my additional info requested by the HC (basically they ask you to spell out major achievements, providing references and transcripts)
Received call + offer after 7 additional working days.
Time from first interview to job-offer: just 14 working days!
Overall a very fair interview process and positive experience. Extremely good communications with the recruiter in charge ( kept me in the loop all the time) and overall a very straight forward and efficient process.
(And in case you wonder, I directly wrote down all questions as soon as I had finished the interviews)