Ask HN: Why does Google get away with such bad recruiting practices?

[frustrated_90]

Recently I've been through the on-site interviews at Google and had a terrible experience. The recruiter went silent after my on-site and my calls are directly going to voicemail. The on-site was a month ago and I've heard nothing regarding my status. I've shared this experience with some of my friends, and they've all had similar experiences. My question is - how is Google getting away with such bad recruiting practices? I've never had a company not call me back after I took a day off work to interview, even if it is bad news! Shouldn't bad recruiting practice like this hurt the company's reputation? And shouldn't people be more hesitant to apply to companies knowing that they will be treated badly?

[busterarm]

A buddy of mine interviewed for a fairly senior role at Google (SVP equivalent) and he had about 6 or 7 in-person interviews within a week or two before they went radio-silent. 6 months later they contacted him and asked him to come in for another round of interviews -- at which point he told them he was going to pass.

Edit: This was a half-decade or more ago.

[honkhonkpants]

The idea that randos are just interviewing to be SVPs at Google doesn't seem particularly likely to me.

[PaulHoule]

People want to be on the side that is winning. Also, they want minions and one characteristic of a good minion is unlimited tolerance for abuse. You might as well start early in the process.

If you join Scientology, for instance, the second thing you do is TR0 Bullshit where somebody screams as you and you just sit there and don't flinch. After that they'll scream at you all the time and if you complain they'll tell you to "keep your TRs in.". If you really cant stand getting abused they don't want you on board.

[adamveld12]

I had quite a memorable experience where a Google recruiter accidentally CC'd their post interview survey email instead of BCC. After the initial "haha" moment we discovered that almost all of the ~2k people in the email list were African American. A private LinkedIn group was started after that, although I haven't followed up with it lately.

Also for that particular interview, I waited for an hour and a half in the lobby before a recruiter finally showed up. It turned out that my recruiter was let go the day before and my interview time fell between the cracks. Pretty much the worst experience I've ever had interviewing.

[M_Grey]

Because they're huge, they have gobs of money and influence, and people want to work for them in the hopes of getting a piece of both. Greed is a powerful force, especially when backed by a complaint ideology.

[thefastlane]

curious what you mean by 'complaint ideology' ?

[coldcode]

Most big companies are terrible at recruiting. Google requires massive numbers of people so they can't spend much time or concern on any one position or one recruitee. Even my employer (non SV) can't even post positions for engineers that make any sense (which is why we get so few candidates).

[tschwimmer]

There's no reason why they can auto-generate a "We have decided not to proceed with your application" email when they move your status to rejected at the very least. It costs marginally nothing.

[Retric]

When McDonalds will treat minimum wage workers better than you are treating people there is no excuse.

[thrill]

Seems like they could spring a couple of bills for a technical writer to polish the requirements when the end result is likely to be a six digit salaried employee.

[codegeek]

I am not defending Google here but plenty of reasons I would guess:

- Lot of people want to work for Google. Plenty of supply

- Cost/Benefit. The cost of contacting everyone is not worth the benefit. Probably too many applicants to respond to

- Because they can. They are Google.

- They are big. Perhaps a certain division/HR team is worse than others. So it could come down to specific HR team who is the culprit.

I bet if the supply of candidates go down and they need to find people, they will respond a lot more.

[nogbit]

I interviewed at MS in 2000, they said the same thing during the interview to one of my questions "Because we can. We are MS.". My response is probably why I did not get the job.

[pascalxus]

And, there's a pretty large oversupply of talent in the bay area, so there's plenty of potential candidates to burn through, for a region of this size.

[umbs]

Like with any BigCo, there are always bad apples (recruiters) and things slip through cracks. But compared to other similar sized companies, Google is quite focused on improving their interview processes. You can find lots of resources online from Google employees explaining it. The one I found very enlightening is from Moishe Lettvin given at Etsy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8RxkpUvxK0

My own personal experience couple of years ago was good. I failed the interview though.

[mizzao]

Laszlo Bock's Work Rules! highlights many things that have been tried and implemented at Google to improve recruiting and retention. It might be a bit effusive, but I think the insights generally do apply to many workplaces.

https://www.amazon.com/Work-Rules-Insights-Inside-Transform/...

[contingencies]

Go someplace decent which gives you space, respect as an adult, money and ethics instead of joining a centralized, politicized, authoritarian spy network that will treat you like an eternally incapable teenager.

[strathmeyer]

Lol I graduated with a CS degree in 2004 and have been searching for an entry level software development job ever since. Google was the first and only company to call me back to tell me I didn't get the job. I think things are getting worse out there.

[darkstar999]

Either you are a really bad developer or you are shooting for the stars. You really haven't found any work since 2004?

[hajrice]

12 Years. Sounds quite long...?

[rewrew]

Was that a typo? Did you mean to type 2014?

[rhapsodic]

> Shouldn't bad recruiting practice like this hurt the company's reputation?

I imagine it has, to an extent, among their pool of potential candidates.

> And shouldn't people be more hesitant to apply to companies knowing that they will be treated badly?

I'm sure there are people who have decided not to pursue employment at Google based on the what they've heard about Google's interview process. But, apparently, there are still many thousands of good developers who are undeterred by Google's reputation. So for the time being, in their cost-benefit analysis, Google has decided they're better off without making major changes in their hiring process.

[amingilani]

Can we have an explanation on why this was flagged?

[elizabethab]

I've had the opposite experience. The recruiter proactively provided updates and kept me up-to-date in terms of expected timeline.

[frustrated_90]

I want to meet you! I've seen so many good stories about Google recruiting online - but I guess my friends and myself aren't big enough sample size to make a valid conclusion. It is just a bit frustrating, an auto generated email costs nothing.

[chinese_dan]

They can get away with it because they have an endless supply of intelligent engineers that want to work there. It's the same effect we see when there is a monopoly over the marketplace.

[tlb]

If so, they underestimate the downside of adverse selection. Bad interview processes still let you hire lots of people, but select out the people who care most about processes not sucking. If you do this for a decade, you end up missing an important element in your organization.

[secure]

If you have any contacts at Google, try asking them to contact the recruiter directly. That usually works.

Of course, this is not an excuse for the poor treatment you’re receiving, and I’m sorry to hear that.

[infodroid]

Is your only complaint that the recruiter went silent? Or is that only one part of the problem? Because it wasn't clear to me from your description what else went wrong during the process for you to conclude that they have bad recruitment practices.

[southphillyman]

3rd party recruiting agencies get a bad wrap for many justifiable reasons, but this is one area where they provide value. Even though a company may be using dozens of agencies each agency will still have an stream of communication to get real updates no matter how "busy" the hiring HR department is.

Edit: this is assuming the recruiter doesn't go ghost on you themselves that is....

[oldmanjay]

Do you feel like you needed a little bit more emotional support from people you probably won't see again?

[ajeet_dhaliwal]

Because people, even very good people, especially very good young people put up with it. I did. Would I now? No. If a Google recruiter contacts me now I say pass. Ain't nobody got time for that (at a certain age or when you've gone through it enough).

[jinkies]

I had a good experience with Google. The recruiter contacted me at every chance with updates about where things were. It took two months from first being contacted but after I had another offer they sped up the process, scheduling an in person interview two weeks out. After that it was still three weeks until I received an official offer. What probably made the biggest difference was having another offer on the table. It put more urgency on getting me through the process.

[TheMog]

I've interviewed there a couple of times over the years and I was less than impressed by the process.

Doesn't stop people from applying and they seem to end up with the candidates they want, so it's probably working for them. They have to standardize on some process, this one seems to produce the desired results and with the number of candidates they get, I assume that they're not worried about false negatives, but are worried about false positives...