✿ Summerrainx ✿

Somebody keeps googling for: Associate Product Marketing Manager Google Interview. And there are so little of these posts around, most seems to be Software Engineer Google Interview related. So here goes.

The Google story continues. I was contacted by the University Coordinator and he fixed me up with a recruiter as well as for two phone interviews.

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The Phone Interviews:

So I had two phone interviews with two PPM, one after another, in my tiny room in Linkoping. All the questions were technical and puzzle-like. But it just took precision as well as some imagination. Both went very well. In fact, the latter was so nice I was chatting with the guy and he ended up passing me his email to email if I did not get a reply from the recruiter.

So I waited.

And I got an email from the recruiter over the next week saying the usual congratulations we want to invite you on-site to Mountain View for the Google College Day. Naturally I agreed! And then the recruiter did not reply! And this went on for a couple of weeks I and I sent a few emails without responses.

And I waited and waited and waited.

Finally I sent an email to my last phone interviewer, and I got a reply the next day. Not very good. (No wonder during the economic crisis Google is firing a ton of out-sourced recruiters) So apparently I was FORGOTTEN and it was nearing Christmas, so we had to reschedule a really expensive flight to after Christmas where I was going to meet up with the rest of the team.

And yes, I did miss the Google College Day. Bummer.

But still, I was all set to meet the team at Mountain View. And that in itself was great and very well-planned. I received instructions, reimbursement forms, NDAs and the works. Other than the flight from Sweden to the US, the rest of the trip was paid upfront first. Google paid for all transportation costs, plus there was a nice allowance for meals everyday which was about 50USD which meant that you could eat quite alot because meals in the US ain’t that expensive! Plus they also paid two nights at the hotel for international candidates.

But since the flight itself was like too long (more than 10 hours with two transits) I asked and was allowed to extend my hotel stay to three more days in which I paid of course but it also meant that I could explore San Francisco. I thought it was really sweet of the coordinator.

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The trip and the hotel:

I really liked flying from Linkoping, its a small airport so its really expensive to fly from there and you only do it for business or if you have rich parents. I actually flew in a Turboporp which had propellers and everything so it was a nice experience. There was specific instructions NOT to mention that you were for Google on the forms due to security clearances in some areas. And I started to imagine a world where you would seriously say, oh I’m with Google.

I stayed in the Hilton Garden Inn in Mountain View, which apparently is near to the Googleplex. It wasn’t the first time I’ve been there, previously I was there for a bridge game (where the Googlers use cards from National Competitions to see if they could score better) and a puzzle hunt but that’s seriously a story by itself! I arrived late in the night so I figured I would just sleep in one full day and have the next day really fresh for the interview which would be lasting the entire day. I heard there are variants to the duration of the interview but mine was approximately six hours, lunch at the Googleplex inclusive.

Of course to rest easy, I decided to just walk around Mountain View and eat at In-and-Out burgers.

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Day of the Interview:

I arrived at the Googleplex feeling really excited. When you sign yourself in with the receptionist, there’s a really nice guy there which offers you a Google notebook and tells you to take drinks from the fridge. There are a ton of smoothies in the fridge which I thought was really awesome, and so I waited at the Google reception where you could see what the world was actually googling about. And of course there were the ever so famous lava lamps on the counter. The recruiter greeted me, and showed me to the room and allowed me to grab some snacks at the pantry which was insanely packed with all sorts of goodies like M&Ms and stuff. Yum!

My interview room was just outside of where a couple of Google tech talks were being held in the open. There wasn’t alot of people there, like maybe ten. But the guy was talking about some seriously complicated mathematical proof of some algorithm. It was fun to look during breaks though, to see the number of people which actually stayed to watch.

The toilets has funny signs on them as well. (If I’m not allowed to post this please say)

I had interviews with five different people ranging from Product Marketing Managers, Product Managers, Software Engineers and Sales. Because as a PPM you seriously need to work with everybody so everybody must like you. Since this was two years ago and I’m also bounded by an NDA, I cannot really talk about the questions being asked except to say that they weren’t that difficult at all. A rough idea of the kind of questions you could probably read are those pure marketing questions, how to segment demographics, how to target market groups, how to promote adsense, the kind of possible word-of-mouth marketing instrument for say (insert your favorite or unknown google product).

I also had lunch at the infamous Google cafe, the one with the healthy food. It was nice because you could grab all the food you want, for free. Well, technically no, you are paying for the food out of a reduced pay check, but still I still have a college mentality, and college students are attracted by free food. The Googler which brought me to lunch was very nice, when she knew that I was from Singapore but lived in London, New Jersey and currently Linkoping, she talked about how PMM get to go once a year to a developing country, and the year before last they went to Russia. I thought that it was really nice.

My general impression though, was that the interviews were mixed. As my memory recalls, the first few and last few interviews were the best. In fact, in the last interview the very nice lady literally said that I was a perfect fit for Google because I had both technical and marketing skills at the same time.

I left the Googleplex feeling mixed that day. One because I think some interviews were kind of amused at my answers. Two because there were people in the group which I really felt wanted me at Google. And Three because I knew that you needed everyone to like you, and these people ain’t the ones making the final decision.

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Conclusion:

I didn’t get in. And I knew it after four months.

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What I think went wrong:

1. I have no idea. My transcripts were lost and I had to resend them. This is after they bring a candidate in from Europe and mind you the entire thing wasn’t cheap. The week later was the Ski Trip so I didn’t get a review. And then I waited, and waited, and finally got a standard rejection letter after four months!

2. My grades weren’t great – aka a 5.0/5.0. My grades eventually upon graduation was 4.0/5.0, but at that time it wasn’t great at all. And Google wants its employees to have a stellar GPA with straight As.

3. This interview was done in the middle of my studies, not at the end. So I still needed to do my thesis and let them wait, or to join Google and screw my Masters.

4. I answered some bad questions. Oh yes, there was one… I remember it vividly because six months later Apple announced the release of Safari for Windows. Bleah.

5. I have very little knowledge about Adsense and Adwords. And Google is an advertising company. I figured I should have been churning out the dough in some way or another already through market affiliates, internet marketing and whatsoever.

6. They wanted super entrepreneurs. Who had already made a bundle in the dot-com bomb.

SERIOUSLY I had no idea.

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But that’s alright. You see, in waiting for Google to get back to me. It took four months. This was after they had spent a huge amount of money bringing me to Mountain View and paying for my expenses there. Plus the waiting and everything in between, it took six months. And of course my life couldn’t wait in situ whilst my application seemed somewhat lost in there, and in the meantime, NXP got back to me, and offered me a traineeship in the Netherlands.

Of course I would have definitely have taken the job in Google if I had been offered.

And it was an experience getting through almost the entire procedure, since Google has its infamous we only hire the best of the best policy. Plus I also got to explore San Jose and San Francisco and that’s another story by itself.

But of course it would have meant (looking in retrospect) that I would never have gone to NXP, finished my MSc, and graduated out of Linkoping University as well as have a paper publication (possible) in IEEE. I would also not have interned in the High Tech Campus and got a job there as well. (Yes I know, I was interviewing in a marketing position in Google, but I am the programming-marketing sort of person)

Plus I also got to explore the streets of Amsterdam to know if prostitutes dancing in the windows and weed sold in the coffeeshops were really true. And so you know how that story ended up….