I wish I could say I had a good interview experience with Google. Unfortunately, I can’t. I was first contacted by external recruiters based in India for a contract position in Singapore. Right from the beginning, their way of communicating was very unprofessional but obviously I cared more about the prospects of the position & company to be too hung up on these recruiters. On several occasions, there were multiple miscommunication regarding the process to the extent that the external recruiters forwarded emails, screenshots and voice recordings with their client (Google) to me. I found it really shocking at first but it seemed like the recruiter could not even write simple English to the candidate thus he had to rely on forwarded conversations to get messages across. At some point he even shared things that should’ve been confidential and said “between you and me”... at this point, I don’t even want to comment any further.
The entire process was long & tedious. I had to do multiple assignments which I didn’t mind since it was expected of Google but what made it worse was mistakes on either Google or the external recruiter or both that led to missing out key info in the assignment and me having to redo everything which was a huge waste of time.
Eventually I was told that I made it to the final round & was waiting for the last round to be scheduled but it never happened and suddenly, the role was “cancelled”.
I’ve never felt so disrespected. Based on the email exchanges that the recruiter disclosed, I was also taken aback by the condescending attitude Google recruiters had while dealing with outsiders. Maybe being a tech giant that’s “the best place to work in” allows them to do that, but this confirmed my thoughts on how contractors are treated as second class citizens while doing the bulk of work for Google.
On a positive note, the interviewer was nice (that made me continue despite the red flags) although he ghosted towards the end.
I’m not sure what this entire experience says about Google’s culture and hiring process. You make the call.
