For those who think that there is a skills shortage, let me tell you about my Google job interview [View all]

[twins.fan]

A couple of years ago, I was contacted via email asking me if I would like to work for Google. I was awestruck. Of course I would like to work for Google! That would be an awesome opportunity! I exchanged a few emails and phone calls with the Google HR people. They walked me through some pretty superficial questions, instructed me to install some software onto my computer called GoogleDocs, and then set me up with a technical screen.

Before I go further in my discussion, I would like to give you the backdrop. The event occurred in February of 2010. A few months later, in about May time frame, Google had some kind of news release indicating that they had interviewed a million workers, and only 2500 of the candidates were satisfactory for employment at Google. OUT OF ONE MILLION CANDIDATES, GOOGLE FOUND THAT ONLY 2500 US STEM WORKERS WERE QUALIFIED TO WORK AT GOOGLE! US STEM workers were not qualified to be engineers, technicians, gophers, parking attendants, NOTHING! We however were qualified to pay the taxes that funded the schools that educated the workers at Google, but we were just not qualified to work with the likes of Larry Page and the rest of the Google employees with whom we commoners were blessed by God.

Let me get on with the rest of the story. As I said the Google HR person instructed me to install GoogleDocs onto my computer and set me up with the technical screen.

The person conducting my interview was ten minutes late, which was no big deal, until I realized that the reservation for the room from which he was conducting the interview expired before the interview was complete. Plus, the fellow was not fluent in English. He was apparently from Red China. He told me that he had graduated from Shanghai University and previously had worked at Netscape.

Compounding his inability to speak English, the person conducting the interview was using a speaker phone from Hell. I asked him if he was speaking on a speaker phone, and he indicated that he was. He did say that we were going to have to suffer through that because he did not want to have to hold the handset during the entire interview. I had great difficulty understanding the person interviewing me, and I know that he had trouble understanding me because, he was constantly interrupting me asking me to repeat myself, sometimes several times per word.

There were three sets of questions that I found to be trivial. Contrary to news reports that I had heard about a complex interview, the questions were trivial. I have thirty years of experience doing this stuff and he asked questions that were right in my wheel house. I probably had been doing this stuff since this guy was born.

Then he gave me a problem that required my writing an algorithm to solve a problem of his. I was given two minutes to solve the problem, but miraculously I came up with the answer! Then the person asked me to write down the answer and read it back to him, which I did. Remember, I only had two minutes, so my notes were sketched as I was compiling the answer. When I started reading it back to him, again the interviewer asked me to repeat myself constantly, completely destroying our chain of thought. It was terrible! I asked the interviewer to use the GoogleDocs software that I was instructed to install. He refused. I suggested that he allow me to email him the answers. Again, he refused. He said for me to just read the answer back over the phone. Again, he was interrupting me with his asking me to repeat myself. Again I asked him to use the GoogleDocs software that I was instructed to install or allow me to email him the answers. Again he refused.

About this time there was a knock on the door in the room that he was using to conduct this interview. The interview was over. Time had expired on his reservation for this room.

A few days later, I was informed that I was not suitable to work at Google.

A few months later, I discovered that I was one of a million people that Google had used as props for their public relations event that Google used to persuade the public that US STEM workers are not qualified to work at Google.

I filed a complaint with the EEOC. The finding of the EEOC is pending.