
Woman recruited by Google four times and rejected, joins age-discrimination suit - mkempe
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2950914/it-careers/woman-recruited-by-google-four-times-and-rejected-joins-suit.html
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skynetv2
I "succeessfully cleared" full interview loops two times and didnt get an
offer, didnt get past phone screens two times. recently i got another call
from Google and I said

"no, thank you. either i am not a good fit or you are using me to have a
reasonable pool of candidates to compare against."

the entire process is very lengthy, slow, often interacting with rude
interviewers, with no eta on if an offer will be made and no reasonable
explanation on why they did not make an offer. One time the reason I got was
"we no longer need to fill that position" after 3 months of interview loop.

~~~
drubio
I experienced a very similar broken interview process, but with Amazon (AWS).
It appears this is more common at the big tech companies than I thought ,
judging from your comment and all the others in this thread.

I was contacted three times for the same position, until I also had to tell
the recruiter 'no thank you, remove me from all future positions'.

The first time I was scheduled to fly into Seattle, they even asked me what I
wanted for lunch! Then 1 week before the flight, they cancelled everything,
reason 'none given', just 'we will keep you on file'. A different recruiter
contacted me a second time 3 months later, I thought to schedule the Seattle
interview, but I was told it was 'a different hiring manager' and I needed to
do the phone screens again. So I did, after the phone screens, I was given the
canned email 'we cannot extend another interview..'. Then the same recruiter
contacts me again a month later to see if I wanted to interview! At which
point I just declined.

~~~
plonh
Amazon does hire for specific positions, so if a manager picked your resume
but hired someone else first, you get dropped until another manager picks your
resume.

~~~
clebio
Which itself is something of a broken process, but hey.

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nickbauman
Google's "interview process" is kind of a Valley joke. The only way you get
hired at Google is if you're a "tech celebrity" (i.e. Guido van Rossum),
you're a freshly minted grad from the likes of MIT and Stanford or you're an
acqui-hire. Of course you have to pass the interviews. But there are almost no
exceptions.

~~~
TallGuyShort
The initial phase of recruiting is also somewhat of a joke. I've heard the
phrase "they interview anyone with a pulse" repeatedly. My own experience: I
have a different recruiter contact me every 6 months, I tell them I'd be very
interested in speaking with someone about specific teams / positions at my
local office, and then 6 months later I get a call from another recruiter at a
completely different office.

~~~
Arainach
This matches my experiences perfectly. Heck, most recently, they contacted me,
said they were interested in talking about my experiences, set up a time,
and......never called. Nor did they ever email explaining why they didn't
call. As if I wasn't already jaded by the experience of myself and several
other friends in onsite interview loops, this has done nothing to improve my
opinion of them as a company.

~~~
TallGuyShort
Speak of the devil... just got an email from Google. And not from the office
I've repeatedly asked to be in touch with.

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Phlow
Having just interviewed at Google, with 15+ years of experience, spending 2
months brushing up on algorithms and data structures, of which none were part
of my interview, leaving at the end of the day thinking they'd be crazy not to
offer me a job, I was rejected. Several 20-something kids interviewed me, and
I'm pretty sure I've forgotten more than they know.

I know they're Google and everyone wants to work there, but if their false-
negative rate is so high, I'm not going to bother wasting my time. Don't tell
me you're interested in me, create a study surface area that takes months to
cover, when in reality the chance of being hired is quite small. It's
disrespectful and it pisses people off.

~~~
plonh
You probably got the "he seems smart, but I would expect someone with this
much experience to gave progressed farther in his career, no hire because no
trajectory , we can't hire someone with 15 years experience at the '7 years of
experience' level he interviewed at". For people who are solid contributors
and not "management material", this looks a lot like ageism, but technically
maybe isn't.

Now, why they want everyone at a 50K engineer company to be management
material...seems ill advised.

~~~
Phlow
Obviously, I have no idea why I was rejected. If that is the case, no part of
their interview tests what a lot of solid devs spend tons of their time doing
in their career... solving problems. I have debugged countless problems. It's
not sexy, not resume material, but it is reality. There are many, many very
good devs working in smaller companies who have made a career out of getting
things done. If Google isn't interested in people like that, I question that
wisdom.

You also can't make a determination about "management material" by simply
looking at a resume and seeing "they aren't a manager". Why am I not a
manager, though? Because I still love development. It doesn't mean I don't
mentor people. It doesn't mean I don't hold a lot of weight in determining how
we do things.

I'm not really claiming ageism. I'm in my mid-30's. I'd be surprised if that
was it. I do wonder if it's wise having 20-somethings interviewing people
though.

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ipozgaj
Google is well known in the Valley for having really bad interviewing process,
but from this article it's not really obvious that's the case here, nor that
she's being discriminated for her age. Her resume does look nice, but that
tells us nothing about her skills or performance on the interviews.

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e40
Regarding the age portion of this. I've visited Google a bunch of times. I'm
always amazed how young people are there. It seems more like a college campus
than a business. It seems to me, in the Mountain View complex, at busy times
like lunch, that 95% of the people I'd see are in the 20-30 range, with a few
older people sprinkled in. It's been this way every time I've been there.

~~~
ConceptJunkie
I worked for AOL in 2005-2006 back before the huge layoffs occurred (and me
included) and it had a similar "college campus" vibe. Overall, it wasn't a bad
place to work, but upper management was a living testament to Dilbert. The
company I work for now has a wide range of ages, including a lot of older
people... which is good, because I'm 50 now.

AOL's hiring process at the time was similarly dysfunctional. I'd interviewed
once a year or two previously, but never heard back (which I didn't realize at
the time is now the norm). The only reason I was able to eventually get in was
because I had a friend working there who got me past the HR barriers. This
friend, who was much more experienced than I was only able to be hired when a
technical manager stumbled across his resume. Apparently, he couldn't get past
HR either, but when the manager found about my friend his attitude was "Why in
the world aren't we interviewing this guy?!" As I said, I got laid off, but my
friend is still there.

My experience with some companies has been that hiring is run by HR people who
have no idea what they are doing, or whom they are looking for, or how to
filter resumes by anything other than keywords (e.g., the proverbial "10 years
experience with a two-year-old technology" nonsense) and so the hiring
managers often never get a chance to see candidates they would be very
interested in.

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alecco
Google's gotta fake the H-1B requirements by pretending not to find local
people for cheap foreign labor.

~~~
shin_lao
H-1B imposes that the hire has competitive pay.

~~~
api
That's only part of the story. If you lose your job, you might not be able to
stay -- and competitive pay may still be lower than a US candidate.

So who do you want if you're Google? An H1-B with really heavy golden
handcuffs, or a US candidate who will rush off and join the latest hot startup
next week after they've tagged 'Worked at Google' on their resume?

~~~
yummyfajitas
The golden handcuffs of an H1B are not heavy. Just get in on Google's dime and
join the latest hot startup next week after they've tagged "H1B" on their
passport.

~~~
makeset
Assuming the latest hot startup would apply for your H1-B transfer, and that
it would be granted.

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api
This is normal for Google's byzantine hiring process. I got in once a while
back (way before what I'm doing now) with a high recommendation from an
insider, successfully cleared the interviews, and never heard anything. They
even flew me to Mountain View.

The second time they called, I declined.

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iza
So she has good qualifications but poor interview skills.

~~~
sosuke
Seems just strange to keep asking someone you reject to come back. When I am
turned away I am turned away no more.

~~~
edroche
Four times does seem excessive, but I have been called back by companies to
interview for other positions in the past. I wasn't a fit for some reason in
the first instance, but my information was saved and presented again when
another opportunity came up that they thought I would be a fit for.

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JamesBaxter
I imagine it's possible there is age discrimination at Google but I doubt it
contributed in this case. Why would Google have contacted her multiple times
if age had been a problem before?

Like the rest of us she's not getting any younger...

~~~
forgottenpass
_Why would Google have contacted her multiple times if age had been a problem
before?_

Why would Google contact anyone multiple times inf there had been _any_
problems before?

Obviously their process must include some sort of returning to potential
recruits, or the recruiter just has no data on the previous attempts to
recruit her. If it was the case that age was the reason they chose not to hire
her, they know damn well not to write that down.

~~~
wobbleblob
People in the US don't put their age on their resume, and many people past a
certain age try to obscure data on the resume that would give their age away.
It's illegal to ask in an interview, so perhaps they didn't realize until they
saw the candidate in person. I remember reading somewhere the average age of
google employees (that's all employees, not new hires) is below 30. A group
like that isn't likely to hire someone too old for them to relate to any more
than a company with an average age over 50 is going to be interested in hiring
a 19 yr old. We can't relate to people of a different age, that's the way it's
always been.

Where I live, if your date of birth (and in some cases recent color
photograph) isn't on your resume, they'll assume you have something to hide
and you'll get no response. Might as well be upfront about it.

~~~
shenanigoat
That's odd. Where is that?

~~~
timeiscoffee
afaik, South Korea is like that as well.

Here is a sample korean resume that shows a color photo, age and SSN:

[http://www.soompi.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/11/resume.jpg](http://www.soompi.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/11/resume.jpg)

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vinceyuan
"Google favors workers who are under the age 40" I am thinking about my career
path. I don't know if a company will hire me as a software developer when I am
40+ years old. I do understand the companies like young people.

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plonh
I have been surprised at how many programmers left the industry to become
farmers.

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zajd
I can't believe the number of people defending Google in the comments on that
article and elsewhere. I'm sorry, but if you actively recruit someone and
interview them in person FOUR times but continue to mysteriously deny them
something is horrifically wrong with your hiring process. Beyond that,
statistics don't lie.

~~~
clebio
Completely agree. Even if the only thing wrong is, they can't keep track of
who they've already interviewed (so they don't call them again), that's pretty
sad. You're freakin' Google, and you can keep your decided-against list
eventually consistent? Poor form.

~~~
plonh
"No hire" is not a permanent Scarlet letter. Why is it wrong to take a second
chance?

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dudul
The title is a little misleading. She was never actually hired, just
interviewed.

~~~
elsherbini
Maybe the title changed since your comment, but 'recruited and rejected' means
exactly that, interviewed and not hired.

~~~
informatimago
Nope. Not according to my understanding, and not according to dictionaries
such as the Merriam-Webster:

recruit verb re·cruit \ri-ˈkrüt\

: to find suitable people and get them to join a company, an organization, the
armed forces, etc.

: to form or build (a group, team, army, etc.) by getting people to join

: to persuade (someone) to join you in some activity or to help you

"Recruited" definitely means she was hired. She wasn't, she was only
interviewed four times and not given a job offer each time.

Check her resume:
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/cherylfillekes](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cherylfillekes)

~~~
justizin
Could you possibly be focusing on a less important facet of what this
discussion should be about?

~~~
dudul
It _is_ important.

The title implies that she was actually hired and let go 4 times - which
doesn't make sense and would be a very awkward story. Being interviewed 4
times and passed on is a completely different story.

