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Comment by vinhboy | Hacker News Reader

Besides knowing someone who will recommend you, how exactly do you even get an interview?

Go to Stanford or MIT. I know that may sound flippant, but my understanding is that Google really does have a very strong preference for hiring from big-name schools.

You fill out an application and send in a resume. Works surprisingly well.

Only if you went to the 'right' school or previously worked for the 'right' company.

There are a lot of screens prior to a human reading your resume, and without a recommendation, you have a slim chance of a callback.

It hasn't worked surprisingly well for me. I've been told by several people that Google's hiring department is a black hole.

The best way I know is to work on something innovative that gets some press.

They troll LinkedIn a fair bit -- Google recruiters ask after me a couple of times a year.

I checked your LinkedIn profile and it appears you:

* Live in the Bay area

* Graduated from Carnegie Mellon

* Specialize in C++

* Have an open source portfolio

* Have mobile development experience

Looks like you're low hanging fruit as far as Google recruiters are concerned - it's surely worth their time to call/email you every so often just in case your situation has changed.

I too have been getting pinged by google recruiters from LinkedIn about once a quarter. I ignore them. I'm highly annoyed by what I consider to be bullshit interview questions, it's likely I'll never interview there.

I agree with you there. They have an annoying habit of contacting ideal candidates with years or even decades of real world experience, and asking them idiotic administrivia questions that I could find the answer to in 30 seconds with access to a search engine, yet probably don't have memorized unless you happen to have a photographic memory and memorized every RFC.

What do you consider "bullshit interview questions"? In my interview I didn't get any of the "how many pennies would fit in the pockets of all the window washers in Seattle"-type questions.

I've heard that contributing to their open source stuff regularly is a good way to get a recommendation.

Edit: From their Chromium guys. They might have been dangling a carrot, in retrospect.

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