How To Crack Open Ended Questions for Google Interview — Leaked Questions with Answers

What if I tell you about few leaked questions from Google Interview and explain you step by step how exactly you can answer them so that you get your second interview guaranteed?

Intrigued

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Alright, let’s get into it then.

First Question 1#

You are in charge of organising the grand opening event of a new Google office.

How would you plan this event?

Remember the steps in building a really strong response.

First, always take a moment before responding.

And secondly, remember to ask clarifying questions.

Here’s some clarifying questions that I would ask

1. Where’s the new Google office?
   - Cambridge, Massachusetts.
2. Is there a budget?
   - You can decide the budget There was a similar event in the New York City office last year and their budget was $50,000.
3. How many people are attending?
   - 100 people

Always take a moment before responding to the question.

Also asked them really thoughtful clarifying questions, and now I am going to share some logical assumptions.

Here are some of these assumptions that I would make.

Assumption number one: I will assume that there is a facilities team on site to help me organise this event.

Assumption number two: I’ll also assume that the objective of this event is to welcome new Googlers to the Cambridge office.

Assumption number three: Since New York City is a larger city than Cambridge, I’ll assume this grand opening will be smaller.
I’ll also assume we have a $10,000 budget across 100 people.

Remember the framework:

First, you took a moment before responding.

Secondly, you asked the interviewer really thoughtful, clarifying questions.

Third, you shared out logical assumptions, and now you are going to show your work, which means actually sharing out your thought process.

Strong Answer:

I’m assuming we have a budget of $100 per person. I’m also assuming I will have the capacity to coordinate with someone in the Cambridge office.

Lastly, I will also assume all logistical needs can be solved by local vendors.

Here’s an example of an ideal Google’s solution.

First, I’m assuming there is a facilities team on site to assist with this project. And all logistical efforts can be supported internally.

I would reach out to that team to begin planning and to assess if I will have to use outside vendors.

Second, I’ll assume we’ll have a budget of $100 per person. Therefore, I know I’ll have ample budget for food, drinks and decor.

Third, because the objective of the event is to welcome new Googlers to the office.

I would ensure that I am inclusive of all Googlers in my planning.

And finally, I would collect an experience feedback survey from the New York City event and incorporate it into my planning.

Here’s how I would measure my success for my solution.

1. Sending out a post event survey to the attendees to measure impact against the intended objective,
2. Capacity to stay within budget
3. Number of attendees.
4. And Will my project plan be used to plan future grand openings?

So we just walked through a leaked Google interview question together?

Not so bad, right?

Now you’ll have the capacity to actually practice at home.

Second Question 2#

You have to hire 50 new engineers for a new team in a new location.

How would you do that?

So, let’s answer the 50 engineers and new team in a new location that’s very recruiting specific skill set.

Never expect when you answer one of these questions for your interviewers to answer your follow-up questions or clarifying questions.

This is what again happened with several people at Google.

That’s fine.

You don’t need them to answer your questions as long as you’re showing thought process.

Strong Answer:

Do you mind if I use the whiteboard? To be clear, you’re asking me to hire 50 engineers in a new team in a new location.

I have some follow-up thoughts, questions. Can I ask?

And my first and most important question is:

1. Has anyone done this recently? — Is there anyone still working within the organisation that has done it.
   It doesn’t have to be at the same scale hiring the same types of roles, but that’s my first question.
   It’s critical for me to not try and reinvent the wheel. So the first area I’m going to go is find out if we open a new office recently in another location, and if I can utilise that data for success, assuming this hasn’t happened.
2. A second question would be, is an acquisition possible? Is this something that the organisation would look into in this new market?
   Could we potentially hire 30 or 40 of those engineers through an acquisition and then really streamline and up tick, the amount of time it takes to get 50 hires?
   Now, if neither of these options are available.
   You know, some of my initial thoughts and questions would be;
3. What is my deadline timeline to hire?
4. What is my budget?
5. Have we actually identified this location?
6. Do we have a recruiting plan?
7. Will I be able to you utilise current staff to help with my interviewing?

And then I will ask some specific questions like:

1. What types of engineers Am I looking for front end, back end,full stack?
2. Am I looking for electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, industrial engineers?
3. And then what is our leadership plan? Are we just going to hire leaders to build and stack this team specifically, or we’re going to be able to transfer some leads in to help build and grow the team?

Okay, so these are just a few of my warm-up questions.

Again, if I had this question in an interview, I’d probably ask two to three times as many questions, but this is our start.

So then the second path is,

I’m going to take more of the generic assumption approach, not the example approach.

I think about hiring 50 engineers at the new location, getting everything ramped up, let’s just call it six months.

Let’s assume that this budget will include our ability to fly any staff to help interview and just have a budget for staff to actually build this up.

If we haven’t identified a location, let’s go with Boston, a large metro area. Lots of higher education, pretty good public transit, tech companies are already established there, and it’s less expensive than San Francisco or New York and just this overall metro area to pull from including New York would be excellent.

As I think about a recruiting plan, ideal recruiters could hire about 7 software engineers in a quarter.

So I want to just build in a little to make sure that we get there.

Let’s say 8 recruiters, I want one source or two to support every recruiter, so eight sources and then about one coordinator per every four people.

So 4 coordinators, so in total, staff of 20.

And then will we be able to utilise current staff we can do a mix of doing some of it live just to help build the support, job fairs, that kind of stuff.

Because software engineers are the most desirable position to hire right now.

Again these answers are really long, and they take a long time, but that’s how I would really break it down and think about it.

So here’s another leaked Google interview question that you can practice at home.

Imagine you’re working on an email product, and a competitor starts charging a $5 monthly fee for their product.

How would you assess the situation and what recommendation would you make to your team?

So here’s what interviewers are thinking as you’re answering these questions. One to the candidate understand the question, and including the basic problem. Two, did they ask clarifying questions?

Remember clarifying questions are incredibly important to get to that right answer, three what relevant information stakeholders and variables were considered?

Please keep in mind that the interviewer may say things as you’re asking those clarifying questions such as you decide or you pick or you choose, feel comfortable in that ambiguity, and continue to work through using your best assumptions to the candidate.

Identify multiple solution options. Remember, there’s no prescriptive way to answer these questions.

There are multiple right answers, just choose the best one that you can justify, were they able to reasonably justify why their solution was the best option.

Communication is incredibly important during this process.

So, making sure you’re communicating why you’re justifying this particular solution.

And lastly, did the candidate incorporate any feedback hints from probing questions?

The interviewer is there to support you and to help you through your journey as you’re answering this question.

So if they’re giving you feedback, make sure to incorporate that feedback and pivot as necessary.

If you have any additional questions on this very topic, tricky subject, please put them in the comments below.

I would really appreciate it, and I hope this article helps.

Open-ended questions are definitely tricky. So you want to build that framework and read, and you’ll do fantastic. Thanks so much.