HC at Google = Some employees who did not interview you. It's a hit or miss game when your packet is submitted. But no clarity on inside of the HC. How many folks review it? Are all of them swe or some other roles also? What are the levels of these people in HC, l5, l6, etc? What are they looking for in the feedback submitted by actual 5 interviewers? The HC part to me is very much like black box. Folks at Google, care to answer above questions? :-) TC: 255, L5 SDE, Seattle
It makes a pretty lousy interview experience for the candidates but it’s a really good idea to have an independent group of people make the hiring decision. They are not under any pressure to hire you so if your interviewers can not write a compelling case for why to hire you, then maybe they shouldn’t.
There’s a chapter in Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg’s “How Google Works” on this topic.
Here’s what I know about the HC - They meet once a week or twice a month depending on the number of candidate packets to review. Their job is to ensure that Google is not lowering the hiring bar just because the company needs more people. It’s mostly comprised of people in your ladder (Eg - SWE ladder has HC comprised of SWE) but at a much higher level. I hear Staff is the minimum level. So let’s see what happens. When a candidate interviews, a very extensive feedback is written by each interviewer (typically 2-3 pages, a lot of rubrics etc) and hire/no hire decisions. Your recruiter and the interviewing team decide whether or not to send your packet to HC. Let’s say it’s sent. Sometimes recruiter will do a team match to get a stronger impression of the packet. Remember that Google really wants you to clear the interview and they believe you can, that’s why you’re called for the onsite. Now the individuals of the HC get all the interview packets for all the candidates that have interviewed that week and decided to move to HC. But here’s the catch. It’s anonymised (no names are revealed. It’s just like a bunch of interview feedbacks that need to be individually scored. You don’t even know if they belong to the same candidate). Also, note that at this point the HC hasn’t convened. They just got mails. Now individually they will review all packets and give a score and make a hire or no hire call. This will be based on the signals they get from the extensively filled feedback packets. Once all members have filled in their initial ratings, they convene for the weekly meeting. Your recruiter is also present there. A portal opens up and then now the names and scores and hire/no hire decision made by each HC member are revealed and are sorted by scores. The end goal is that a hire call should be unanimous and not the majority. For example, if a Hc of 6 people score such that a candidate gets 5 hire and 1 nohire, then either the 1 guy who made no hire will be converted to a hire, or the 5 guys who gave a hire will convert their decision to no hire after extensive discussion. Sometimes they would ask for more rounds to get more signals. Eventually 20-30% of the candidates who got to HC make it through this stage and the rest get rejected. It’s important to note that the Hc just makes a “recommendation” and not the final call. The next stage is the VP stage where the VP checks the HC recommendation, the packets and references if needed, and the VP makes the final hire/no hire call. It’s possible to get rejected at this stage too, but doesn’t usually happen.
Well explained. Thank you. Went through the process recently but didn't know that the packets were anonymous. Does HC also make notes as to which Org the person should be placed in and so on?
No. HC just recommends the level. Actually even the level decision is a little weird. Your recruiter will first set your loop for a certain level (say L5). The HC will decide if they should recommend you for L5 or if you will perform better as an L4 or L3 and recommend that. Sadly they don’t usually recommend an uplevel because you’re interviews would be different for an uplevel. Sometimes they might say a no if there could be a huge level - experience mismatch. Like say someone with 20 yoe but performing at L3 in interviews would be a no hire because they’d expect a certain caliber for the experience.
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It makes more sense than amazon where the bar is so widely varied by org because some teams get desperate to hire and there isn’t really a check in place. Especially when a bar raiser just goes with the managers recommendation
I get the quality check part on the hiring. HC is relevant but it's a black box. My questions are around that.
Coz if the candidate knows what the HC is looking for, then the candidate will try to optimize their chances of getting through HC. Also, I guess the perspective of hire/no hire depends on who sits on HC. So it's hard to quantify that.