Personal &Tech & VC 30 Jul 2006 01:46 pm
Google APM Interview
I recently wrapped finished Google’s three month long interview process. I applied for their Associate Product Manager (APM) position. Google’s hiring process is notoriously slow, and as a result they lose a lot of great people to other companies (not just my opinion, but the opinion of Google insiders, straight from the horse’s mouth), so that’s why it was three months. The process consisted of a total of twelve interviews, not counting phone screen and interviews with recruiters… needless to say, that’s a crushingly large number of people to impress, and that’s assuming you have the credentials to get your foot in the door. The breakdown of the twelve interviews is as follows: 7 with other APMs, 1 with a coder, 4 with more senior level people (for me it was 1 PM, 2 directors, and 1 VP).
The interviews focused on a few specific subjects, in the following order of importance: product design, technical skill, pricing, and your personal history. The product design questions were a piece of cake, and anyone with some imagination can rock them. The technical skill questions were very hard for me; some involved coding, others were brain teasers, some required knowledge of an SysAdmin’s job. The pricing questions were essentially math games; they require working your way to a sensible price for a product given a bit of information. It sounds easy, but it’s tough to do even basic division while under pressure. Finally, your own background and personal history makes it way into a few questions, but it seems pretty unimportant compared to the rest of the interview. It seems like personal history is more of a jumping off point for talking about the three other, more important subjects. I would guess that personal history is crucial to get your foot in the door and get the interview in the first place, so that’s probably why they don’t focus on it.
Feel free to contact me if you’re applying and want some advice (No, I won’t talk about specific questions, but I’ll be happy to discuss the process more generally). However, take my advice with a grain of salt as I am pretty sure I didn’t get the job.
I wanted to end this post with a video I found on digg. It was a guy applying for an interviewing for the APM job at Google… it was absolutely ridiculous… but the video was stored on Google Video and now it’s gone, so I’m guessing that after the video was posted to digg, Google removed it either at the request of the kid or by their own choice. Oh well. It anyone can find another copy of this video, please send me a link.
14 Responses to “Google APM Interview”
on 10 Nov 2006 at 3:37 pm 1.Cal said …
Hey,
It’s Cal. Just had an interview with Google about APM as well.
Did you make it onsite? What was your process like?
Email me.
Cal
on 18 Jan 2007 at 8:54 am 2.Hiten said …
I went through the same rodeo show, except my HR person would routinely lose my emails and claim I didn’t send any (from my GMAIL account no less!). Swung by recently for lunch–the place felt like Wilbur with the same people and soso food. At least I took a ton of naked juices……
on 23 Jan 2007 at 10:13 pm 3.Jeff said …
Hi – I am about to go through the process – would love to chat with you!
on 21 Feb 2007 at 7:34 pm 4.Sidharth said …
Hi Andrew,
I am going to interview with them onsite for the apm position soon. I wanted to know more about
the technical skill questions. What kind of prep shud I have? Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Sid.
on 14 Mar 2007 at 9:53 am 5.Alexander said …
Interesting info about the pricing questions. Would love if you could elaborate a bit more on this! (email?) Thanks!
on 23 Apr 2007 at 10:26 pm 6.DP said …
Hey Andrew
I have an APM interview coming up next week. Any tips on preparing for the technical part/pricing part?
DP
on 08 Jun 2007 at 12:15 am 7.Sam said …
Andrew, thanks so much for your post. Really helps to get an idea of what to expect, so you don’t panic at the stupidest of questions. I am going to go through the same process in some time, can I please get in touch with you via email?
Thank you in advance,
Sam
on 12 Jul 2007 at 7:06 pm 8.Nani said …
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for sharing your exprience.
I shall be going through the interview process very soon. Can you kindly email me some tips on preparing for the technicalskills an pricing bits? Are there any books/ websites/ any material that I can use to brush my skills up?
Thanks ,
Regards,
Nani
on 01 Aug 2007 at 9:36 pm 9.Vikram said …
Hey,
Good to see this information coming up. I would be happy if you could share some information about preparation for the interview esp. techie stuff and pricing strategy. Would like to elaborate on email.
Thanks,
Vikram
on 01 Aug 2007 at 9:36 pm 10.Vikram said …
Hey,
Good to see this information coming up. I would be happy if you could share some information about preparation for the interview esp. techie stuff and pricing strategy. Would like to elaborate on email.
Thanks,
Vikram
on 09 Oct 2007 at 7:30 pm 11.tammy said …
hello. i have an interview for the APM tomorrow. Wanted to see if u can please give some guidance to the technical questions being asked and how to prepare. thanks.
on 03 Apr 2008 at 1:16 am 12.Ilya Blokh said …
Hey – same boat as everyone else here, two phone screens with APMs tomorrow. If you’re not tired of answering questions yet, shoot me an e-mail. Cheers.
on 10 Jul 2008 at 4:41 pm 13.UI said …
Hey… I’m facing the first of many APM interviews soon. Please get in touch.. it would be great to chat.
on 06 Nov 2008 at 11:23 pm 14.Zoheb said …
Just to introduce myself, I am from Purdue University doing masters in Computer and information technology. I have done my bachelors in computer science.
I have got the first phone interview for the APM position next week.
I wanted to know how you prepared for the position and what are the expectations of the interviewer.
Please can you email me the techie stuff and pricing strategy.
Any kind of information will be useful which will help me prepare for the interview.
Thanks
Zoheb Kerawalla
Masters student at Purdue University