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Comment by tananaev | Hacker News Reader

I think most companies can't afford to do Google-style interviews. Google can do it because it's a dream company for many people, so they are willing to invest a lot of time in preparing for the interview.

Google-style interviews check two things and nothing more:

- You are reasonably smart person

- You are willing to spend a lot of time practicing and preparing for the interview

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They also check whether you can communicate (both ways) in ways that enable collaboration with colleagues.

And interview feedback is not the only source of data used for the hiring decision (your CV and info provided by your referees are among the others).

Does most of it come down to memorization? I haven't ran into these styles of interviews so far.

Yes, it does. I mean, that's a lot of material. You prepare for the interview, thus showing them how dedicated you are. No matter how "smart" you are, time passes, you don't use 95% of that stuff during day to day work so naturally you forget most of it. So for the next endeavor you have to rinse and repeat. Everyone agrees that it's a game. I think the companies like it because it discourages employees to switch jobs often and easily.

This description bears no resemblance to the interview process I experienced at Google before going to work there in 2012.

Interesting. Could you please elaborate?

Where have you been interviewing? And how many interviews have you done so far?

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