Smart Enough to Work at Google Poundstone Review
| Are You Smart Enough To Work At Google? by William Poundstone | |
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| Category: Business and Finance | |
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| Reviewer: Zoe Morris | |
| Summary: A brilliant book that lets yous reply the question in the title...though you lot might not approve of the outcome. William popped into Bookbag Towers to conversation to united states of america most task interviews. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 290 | Appointment: April 2012 |
| Publisher: Oneworld Publications | |
| ISBN: 978-1851689170 | |
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I find recruitment fascinating. I started my career on a top 10 graduate scheme whose recruitment procedure included a 24-hour simulation of life in the role, and at present some years later I'm on the other side of the tabular array, taking function in the recruitment of the next generation. Prior to that I worked everywhere from multinational software companies to British loftier street department stores and over the years I've heard everything from the boring (What are your strengths and weaknesses?) to the predictable (Tell me about a fourth dimension you worked every bit part of a team and encountered conflict) to the quite frankly brilliant, in my mind (How many pianoforte tuners are there in Barcelona?) Once I had to come up with a variety of uses for a cocktail shaker later on first gaining points for beingness able to place the particular correctly, despite being a tee-total teen at the fourth dimension. If interviews are a fourth dimension to shine, I adopt the latter two tasks to the first two because they allow you show what you can do, and how you would arroyo a chore, rather than but making y'all prattle off a prepared response.
Google gets nearly 130 applicants for every job according to the volume, which compares to fourteen applicants for every identify at Harvard. That doesn't actually audio massively loftier to me (my year, the odds for my grad scheme worked out as 78 to ane, and Google we own't) simply information technology'due south even so a lot, and no doubt growing yr on yr. The issue isn't and then much nearly the on-newspaper calibre of the applicants, many of whom take tiptop degrees from top universities. Instead, Google and other companies similar them (Apple, Microsoft, even Amazon and Bank of America) are looking for people who can deal with the unexpected, think both logically and outside the box, depending on what the situation requires, and who can enquire the pertinent questions needed to analyze the ambiguous. That's why they ask questions like these.
Can you swim faster in water or syrup?
How many bottles of shampoo are produced in the world every year?
When there's a air current bravado, does a circular-trip past plane have more than time, less time, or the same time?
Look at this sequence. What comes next?
1
11
21
1211
111221
And, my personal favourite:
On a scale of 1 to 10, how weird are yous?
This isn't a book about how to get a job at Google and most people who read it probably wouldn't take a hope of landing a job at that place. After all, there's more than to getting a chore than but having slick answers to interview questions – and in companies similar that, even getting an interview in the first place tin can exist a hurdle that trips up the vast majority of wannabe Google-ites. Instead, as information technology says in the title, this is a book that lets you work out if, in theory, y'all might vaguely have a mind that thinks in the mode Google desire their employees' minds to work. Solve the puzzles 'correctly' (and sometimes there is no one correct answer) and y'all can pat yourself on the back and feel a little smug at your smartness, if but for a day.
You might not think a book that is really just questions, answers and explanations would be a good read, or even a bearable 1. I'm actually not looking for a new job at the moment (in fact I've three weeks left in my notice period before I starting time one I've already been interviewed for and offered) and therefore in principle, this book should be of no interest to me correct now, but I was hooked. The book is highly entertaining, accessibly written and full of 'Duh!' moments.
The book has 10 capacity that cover everything from where these approaches to interviewing came from to how to estimate but about anything in lx seconds or less and what to do if you literally don't have a clue about something. Each department is brimming with questions, but as some take rather long, protracted answers, these are provided in a second role of the book, after the main text so as not to interrupt the menses. Information technology works and information technology doesn't – I spent most of the time flipping to the back anyway to come across if my ideas matched their ideas, but at present and then I saved a question for afterward and kept on reading through which was easier because the reply narrative was out of the manner. The merely real downside was that in a 290-page volume, the principal text covers only the starting time 136 pages. I got to folio 137 and realised information technology was all over, and I had in fact already read the remainder as it independent answers to questions featured earlier. Non a big criticism, but it did leave me high and dry out at the gym with nothing to read for the residual of my workout.
Back to the positives, though, and this is a book that will brand you think. Forth the way, you'll also find out how typical your mind is – there are diverse questions where the usual response is given… and and then proven wrong. The aim of the questions posed past Google et al is to see how creative you are at solving problems, and and then although definitive answers are given to the questions, I found myself using some as a starting point to run into if I couldn't come upwards with something fifty-fifty better at present they'd launched me down the right path. Alongside the questions, you become tips on what to await from the interviewers and how companies try (and ultimately sometimes fail) to reduce bias in interviews. At that place'due south a warning annotation on Facebook profiles and the detrimental event they tin can have on your image, and the goal behind using wacky questions - sometimes information technology'south the journey… not the destination, as in my piano tuner conundrum which I got 'right' with a last tally that was almost certainly not correct.
I'thou not sure this book would be much assist in preparing for a 'normal' interview in a 'normal' visitor, and I really wouldn't advocate reading this in lieu of more usual research on the role and organisation, but when yous want something to read for the sake of it, want to be entertained, challenged, amused and baffled, and want to have great brain teasers to stump your friends with, this book is the one you need.
Cheers go to the publishers for supplying this book. Your brain volition be aching at the cease of information technology, but you'll have a wry smile on your confront too.
An internet geek (or just want to be one)? Why not take a peek at our views on The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You past Eli Pariser, The Accidental Billionaires: Sex, Money, Betrayal and the Founding of Facebook by Ben Mezrich or best of all our Superlative Ten Books For Slightly Geeky People. You could shelve this next to Do You Think You're Clever?: The Oxbridge Questions past John Farndon.
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Source: http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/reviews/Are_You_Smart_Enough_To_Work_At_Google%3F_by_William_Poundstone
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