Lewis Lin, a former Google and Microsoft employee, has been helping hopefuls snag jobs at the Internet giant for five years. He compiled a list of 140 of Google's interview questions, which are at times offbeat.
From the mundane to the quirky, Google expects it's prospective employees to be able to tackle anything it can throw at them during the interview stage, and according to the UK's
Telegraph,
Seattle's Lin has helped job seekers conquer Google's interview and get hired.
Lin's list consists of traditional questions like "Why do you want to join Google?" but also include brain teasers, technical knowledge puzzles and critical thinking tests. He breaks down potential questions into seven job categories: product marketing manager, product manager, software engineer, software engineer in test, quantitative compensation analyst, engineering manager and AdWords associate.
Samples of the more unusual questions include:
"How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?"
"You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?"
"Imagine you have a closet full of shirts. It’s very hard to find a shirt. So what can you do to organize your shirts for easy retrieval?"
"A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?"
"How would you determine if someone has won a game of tic-tac-toe on a board of any size?"
"How many resumes does Google receive each year for software engineering?"
"Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew."
Lin received his MBA from Northwestern University and has interviewed over 150 candidates for marketing, product management and program management positions at Google and Microsoft.
