Google interviewers: do you look at resumes?
Google interviewers, do you look at a candidates resume before the interview? If so, do you adjust the interview questions acccordingly? For example, would you ask a Phd from Stanford harder questions than a fresh bootcamp grad? When are you selected to interview a candidate, is there any other data accessible to you other than the candidates resume? forgot to mention I am interviewing at Google soon :)
Some interviewers skim, but most don't read: 1. To avoid psychological bias from the halo effect 2. Because it's not the interviewer's job, and it is usually a waste of eng time; filtering resumes falls under the role of recruiting
I’m going to wear a college dropout or university of Phoenix online shirt then :) how do you know most don’t?
You don't gotta act like it's a lie bro
I skim through them to see if I can use that to connect their experience with my question and what terminology I can use without having to explain from first principles.
Do you look at their school or degree at all?
Sure, but just because it's there. I wouldn't care if it weren't.
I had heard of people not looking at resume to avoid the Halo effect. However this discounts a person's past achievements and new things she learned on the job which is a great indicator of persons future growth potential. Also it helps to understand a person's current domain and tailor questions accordingly else there is risk of losing good candidates.
Google is okay making the bar high enough that they lose out on lots of false negatives, but false positives don’t make it through.
That's a very risk averse approach. When you evaluate the responses, do you also think how your friends in the company would be able to answer if they were hearing the question for first time?
One of my G interviewers did. He asked what languages I worked with. I mentioned all the languages on my resume plus more. For the extra languages (e.g. Clojure) I said it was only on personal projects and I don't claim to be an expert. The interviewer was impressed with the fact that I didn't list it on my resume and said "some people put a language on their resume after writing a few thousand lines".
Does the hiring committee look at resumes when leveling candidates?
I do, but quickly, so I know what level of problem I will give you. Also I pay less attention on your experiences, possibly a little more on where you work(ed).
So if someone works(ed) at faang, will you assume they are already strong at algorithms and data structures and ask more practical questions, or ask harder algorithm questions?
By “practical”, you meant less algorithms? No, Google interviews always focus on algorithms, it’s more about medium or hard. Well depending on your level, you can also get a design problem.
I do so I can have a brief chat about past experience. I think starting off the conversation with a topic the candidate is comfortable with allows them to ease into the hard part of the interview.
Ha, when I'm a candidate, I'm always so nervous in interviews until they finally let me code
Only when I'm conducting a Knowledge Domain interview.
Only out of personal interest I like to conect on a personal level if I can to chill them out. I ask every person 1 of 2 questions so no it doesn't effect anything. Honestly I've seen no correlation at all between anything on resume and performance.
protip: If you put down you're a red Topcoder under the achievements section on your resume, the interviewer will just ask for and validate your username and give you a strong hire 👌. You think they asked Petr an LC medium binary tree problem?