Lesson Two: Interviewing at game changing companies is HARD
Be prepared for a gauntlet and remember a little humility goes a long way
I have been extremely fortunate to land interviews at some very interesting companies over the years. I have interviewed with Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, Square, Dropbox and more. There is a whole industry of books, articles and podcasts about how to land those interviews. What should your resume say? What do you need to convey in the cover letter?
I have never really read much of those books and have only parsed the articles. I think for a lot of people, just getting in the room to have a discussion takes considerable effort and is an accomplishment in and of itself. I can tell you all from the perspective of a person reviewing the avalanche of resumes that pour in for even a single job at a Silicon Valley company that there is no real magic beyond having the skills the job description calls out and maybe having a friend within the company to recommend you to the recruiter and hiring manager.
But the harder truth is that getting the interview is not even half the battle. Sitting through a screening interview, if you do well, will lead to a few in person interviews and that will be followed by a third round of interviews with an unrelenting gauntlet of people in a single day. If all of that goes well, you will either have a few more interviews to complete or get the kiss of death email. The point is that getting to the job offer is not exactly a fait accompli.
My very first interview experience in Silicon Valley was a lesson I carry with me to this day. I knew I had to find a new job, I knew that the only company recruiters calling me back were in Silicon Valley, I knew that Silicon Valley was the tech capital of the world and I knew that the crown jewel in those days was Google. I started sending out resumes and loosely reading the job requisitions, if the title sounded like something I could do I sent the resume. The details weren’t that important.
I called my friend Bob, he worked at Google. I told him the job title and sent him my resume. He said he would make an internal recommendation. We shifted gears and talked about all the crazy things we had done together before becoming fathers and business people. I wished him well, he wished me well and we hung up. The whole conversation was probably five minutes long and I thought nothing would come of it.
I was shocked when I got a call from a Google recruiter. I had applied to a job but couldn't even remember what the title was. The recruiter asked me a few screening questions that were basic level telecommunications concepts and about 10 minutes later I was scheduled for a secondary phone screen with the hiring manager.
When I got the email scheduling the chat with that hiring manager, I finally knew the role for which I had successfully snagged an interview. It was a Technical Manager role dealing with SIP phone systems. I figured that the fact that I had never actually worked on a SIP phone system was a minor challenge. I knew SIP stood for Session Initiated Protocol and that I had managed technical employees before meant I was a shoo in!
The hiring manager called me and his second question was, “What does SIP stand for?” He chuckled when I told him and joked with me about how many jokers apply for this kind of job but don’t even know that. 10 minutes later, he was inviting me down to Mountain View for a chat with his team. I felt like a damn champion, maybe my plan would be like a cakewalk to execute despite the fact that I expected it to be rough sledding. Silicon Valley was easy, apparently.
“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?”
This was about the third question I was asked in my interview. I knew I was in deep trouble already, but this was the coup de grace. Before this question and my incoherent, babble spoken answer about who knows what sunk any chance I had of ever working at Google, it had become apparent that just knowing what SIP stood for was not going to be enough to fake my way through this discussion. It was my first real lesson, technical competency matters at a tech company. Who could have guessed?
While that question is really weird and I have no idea what a good answer would be, it was not without purpose. Silicon Valley companies pride themselves on hiring only the best and brightest candidates. They also have very tough and specific criteria for interviewers to evaluate candidates on. If you are going to build a world changing company, you better hire only the best and brightest and to find the best and brightest you better have a plan.
I have been part of vetting many folks who wanted to come work at Facebook and Square. In those instances I could have been the first technical phone screen, after the recruiter asked some basic questions to weed out the imposters, or participated in a panel. The roles as an interviewer in these cases are pretty different.
As the first phone screen you really just want to get a feel for what the person you are talking to knows and has experienced. If they have half of the knowledge you want but can explain how they gained that knowledge, what they took from specific experiences they could be an asset to the team. It is pretty rare to find someone who has everything you want from a knowledge or experience perspective so most of the time at this stage you are trying to figure out if the person on the other end of the phone can grow into the role. You are thinking about what they can handle in 3-6 months, not necessarily just what they can hit the ground running on, though that is important too.
In a panel interview you are generally given a specific area to focus on. Technical competency as one such category and if someone was going to join our team to help plan the network or to manage strategic vendor negotiations I was usually tasked with that because I was the resident with the most expertise. If they were under consideration to join the team to be a Network Engineer I was probably tasked with understanding their “culture fit,” which to me is just a metaphor for “Can this person fit in with the rest of the team and not screw up the balance we have?” Or maybe, “Can this person bring something to the team that we don’t already have?”
My first successful interview at a Silicon Valley company was at Yahoo! I remember showing up for a panel interview in a sport coat, that's what I knew to do from all of my previous professional gigs, and the first guy I interviewed with said “I like you already so I am gonna tell you, lose the coat before everyone else shows up.” I thanked him, took off the coat and hung it on a coat rack out of site, he was clearly there to assess my cultural fit and gave me a hint about how to make sure I passed that test.
Silicon Valley companies expect you to be both confident and humble. It is a real fine line to walk. One tip I always try to remember is that when I am describing a process in depth and making sure my expertise is clear, I make sure to drop in phrases like “This is how I have done it and it will be interesting to see how I can adapt it to fit in here.” A little humility goes a long way in these kinds of scenarios and most of these folks you are going to talk to have already been part of making something amazing happen. They don’t need folks to come in and change everything or enforce a viewpoint, they need people with the right skillset to come an add to an already awesome potential juggernaut.
My second successful interview in Silicon Valley, success meaning I landed the gig, was at Facebook. The interview only came about for two reasons. The first was that I had worked with a guy at Yahoo! who had moved to Facebook and been respectable enough as a teammate that when they asked him if he knew anyone they should chat with, he suggested my name.
The second was because both the leader of the Network Engineering team, the team that I was going to support, and the leader of the Supply Chain team, the team I would be on, had sought my expertise or opinion on something previously. The Network Engineering leader had some questions about the performance of a Network Service Provider and knew that I had done business with them so we had a chat about it. The Supply Chain leader needed help understanding how to manage an inventory of circuits, which is a little different than managing physical hardware inventories, so I volunteered through a friend to have lunch and walk her through what I used.
This is some of what I was getting at back in the chapter about Broadway. Being a willing partner with professionals who do a similar job at other tech companies is not about finding a new job someday, but it certainly doesn’t hurt if you want to find a gig at the next big thing. Heck, I learned as much as they did in these conversations and it helped me at Yahoo! It is a virtuous cycle and good for everyone.
The interview panel at Facebook was tough. People pushed and prodded and were demanding. I was prepared for this after failing at Google and passing the test at Yahoo! I was certain that I had blew it when a lady who would be my partner in Network Sourcing, she managed the Hardware and I would manage the Services, asked me a pretty standard question that I expected to get but caught me at a moment when my canned answer felt wrong. “Why do you want to come to Facebook?”
Our conversation had been pretty free flowing and easy. I had got into a rhythm where I was just being my authentic self and not thinking much about the preparation I had done for the questions I knew to expect and so I blurted out an answer. Halfway through the answer I realized I was going off script and something clicked inside of me.
“I mean, it is Facebook! Come on…” was how I started. But when I paused I couldn’t think of where I really wanted to go and an image popped into my head. It was my three daughters. I took a deep breath and felt my eyes tear up as I imagined telling them about what it was like to work at a company I knew was poised to change the world. I started to speak and couldn’t for a second. I looked right at the lady who is now one of my best friends.
“I do everything for my daughters,” I said, struggling to get the words out. “I can’t imagine how amazing it will feel when they are older and they ask me about career things and I can tell them what it was like to even be in the running for a job at Facebook at this place and time.”
After all was said and done and I started working there, my friend Sarah told me that I shouldn’t have been afraid of that answer. It was what sealed the deal for her and in the debate about who to hire for the role she told all of them about that question and answer and they all agreed I was the guy. Being authentic in a respectable way is always the right way to answer any question.
This experience came in handy when I went to an interview at Square. I sat in a small room and was grilled by some really amazing folks who I still love and respect these years later. I knew once again I was sitting in a room with teammates who were going to change the world. When they asked me a question and I didn’t know the answer I told them so. I spent a lot of time talking about the mistakes we had made at Yahoo! and Facebook. I was authentic and I landed my second gig at a world changing company.
A lot of the interview process at Silicon Valley companies is going to be taxing. You are going to walk a fine line between humility and expertise. You are going to be forced to choose between pretending you know more than you do and admitting you don’t have all the answers. Essentially you are going to have the choice between being authentic or putting on a bit of a show. There are people who have succeeded with either approach, I am sure. For me, authenticity has worked where the other approach has failed.
Either way, if you are interviewing at a Silicon Valley company take a deep breath and mentally prepare for some tough questions and open skepticism. They want to know that you are the best at what you do, that you can take those skills and adapt them to the task at hand and that you can roll with the punches and grow along with everyone else.