How Long Do You Have to Solve Technical Questions?

Before telling you how long you have to solve technical questions, let me ask you a question. Your math teacher assigns you a problem. It takes you 5 minutes to solve it. Is that quick or slow?

Hopefully, you're looking at this question confused. 5 minutes might be unacceptably long to compute, say, the square root of 16, but extremely quick to solve a more complex proof. I didn't tell you what the question is, so how can you tell me if 5 minutes is quick or slow?

So how long do you have to solve technical questions?

As in the above situation, it totally depends on the complexity of the question. A simple factual question might take seconds. A reasonably straightforward algorithm question might take a couple minutes. But a complex algorithm could take 30 minutes or more to solve.

That said, in a technical typical interview, a candidate typically solves one or two coding / algorithm questions. That's an average though, over typical questions; be very careful about thinking, "gee, I solved three questions, I must have done great!" Solving ten questions does not mean that you've done well, if they were easy questions. Likewise, you might have done extremely well without even finishing one question.

So how do you know how well you've done?

You don't (really, really, I promise you, you don't!). Your interview performance is impossible to judge.

The Problem with Occupy Wall Street - and What It Can Learn from Wall Street

Liberals and conservatives alike are looking over their shoulder and laughing at the "Occupy" movement. It's not because of what their demands are, but rather because of their demands are everything and nothing at the same time. Fundamentally, their core frustration is not a political one, but an emotional one. They're sick of feeling ignored by the wealthy and they want to be heard.

And heard they are - on every last demand. Even the crazy ones.

Let's take a look at some of their most popular demands, according to the votes on OccupySeattle.org.

Allow Everyone to Vote (136 votes)

Who is this for? Ex-cons? Immigrants? Children and teenagers?

Corporate Accountability (495 votes)

Corporations are already overflowing with paperwork. It's one of the things that makes it really hard for "regular people" to start a business. Maybe more accountability would be good, but they need to say what exactly this means.

End privatization of the commons (natural resources, education, healthcare, etc.) (139 votes)

The US already has both private and public education. And private education is, without doubt, far superior to public education. Would they like to terminate private education? Why? And if that's not what they're talking about, what does this mean?

Tax the rich and big business (285 votes)

Obviously the US already does. The rich and big businesses pay a much greater percentage of their income than the poor do. Would they like to raise the tax rate? To what? For whom? Or end some of the tax loop holes? Which ones?

I'm sure there are answers to these questions. But is there a consensus on these answers? And who will deliver the answers, when there is no central voice?

So what will happen to Occupy?

#1 They'll get a voice, but they won't get anywhere.

Everyone has gripes about the country, so they'll get plenty of members. They may even have politicians pander to them - their sheer numbers will do that. But how can anyone meet their demands, when there's no indication of what's important or how they would like Washington to "end the greed"?

#2 The crazies will come - and will belong.

As long as Occupy lacks a focused voice and set of demands, every demand can be "one of theirs." There's no one to disavow the really crazy demands, and there's no methodology by which to disavow them.

And if you give the media the choice of talking about the boring ol' reasonable demands and the crazy ones, guess what they'll pick?

#3 They'll be the left's Tea Party.

Sure, they'll say they aren't affiliated with a particular political persuasion. Tea Partiers say they aren't affiliated with the Republicans. But when the vast majority of their members are part of a particular political party, people won't distinguish.

Occupy will fuel Republicans' worst fears about Democrats (even the Occupy logo looks communist!) and will hurt the democrats. And let's face it - the vast majority of folks in the Occupy movement would much rather see a Democrat in power than a Republican.

It boils down to this: Occupy needs to learn what every business leader already knows. To effect change, you need to have a central voice and focused, reasonable vision. Without that, you're just a bunch of kids throwing a temper tantrum.

Okay, folks, here's how the Google interview process really works

Somehow, many candidates have gotten the impression that the interview process is some elaborate system, and if their process is different from their friend's, it must be a reason for it.

The truth is so much more straightforward than that, and once you get, everything will make sense. Or that's my hope, anyway.

Here's how the process works at Google for software engineers. We'll look at this from the interviewer's side and from the recruiter's side. Although this is technically just about Google and Software Engineering, the advice / structure is largely universal across tech companies.

What Your Interviewer is Doing

This is more or less how an interviewer becomes an interviewer:

1. Training: Your interviewer takes an interview training course to teach them how to interview. Actually, they're really just told things like, "Don't ask the candidate if they're married," and "Don't ask where their accent is from." In other words, don't do anything that's going to get the company sued.
2. Shadowing: Next, they "shadow" two interviews... you know, in case they didn't get enough of Google interviews when they were a candidate (yep, your parents were once children themselves, and your interviewers were once candidates). This lets them see the process again, freshly, and chat with the "primary" interviewer about what they thought.
3. Instruction: Then... they're thrown into a room and asked to interview a candidate. Where do their interview questions come from? Well, where would you come up with interview questions if you were in their shoes? You'd probably bring them from you own interview experience or find them online on sites like CareerCup.
4. Evaluation: Interviewers evaluate how well you did relative to other candidates. (This point is so important that I'm obnoxiously bolding and highlighting it. If there were a <BLINK> tag still, I'd use that.) There are two interesting parts of this statement. (1) It's "how well," not "% correct." It's a multifaceted, qualitative evaluation that takes into account how you solved the problem, how long it took you, how many mistakes you made, how much help you needed, and how optimal your solution was (note the "hows", not the "ifs"). I've never once made a simple statement like, "the candidate got this question correct," because that statement doesn't make sense for anything other than simple factual questions. (2) Performance on a question is judged in comparison to other candidates on the same question. Taking 10 minutes to solve a question optimally may be great performance on one problem, but horrible performance on another. How do you know if you did well or not? You don't.

Note that no one here has told them what to ask, or given them a list of potential questions, or asked them to focus on a particular topic.

In other words, they have about as much interviewing training / instruction when they're getting started as any candidate does.

Think about this. There is no system. "Recent Google onsite interview questions" are no different from "old Google onsite questions," or, for that matter, from old Amazon phone interview questions. When interviewers ask more or less whatever they want, there's little consistency* across a company, interview type (phone vs. onsite), or timeline.

[* There are some differences, but most of these are minor. Phone interviews will generally focus slightly less on coding, though there is still coding.  Non-web based companies aren't likely to ask about scalability, unless it's relevant for their team. And some companies have a slight preference towards certain topics, such as Amazon's focus on object-oriented design. The differences between Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Apple are covered more in Cracking the Coding Interview, 5th Edition.]

What Your Recruiter is Doing

You might not know this, but your recruiter is a person too.

Ideally, your recruiter wants to usher you through the process efficiently. If you are going to get you an offer, they want to tell you as quickly as possible. If you're not going to get an offer, they still want to tell you as quickly as possible.

But, that doesn't always happen because stuff comes up - reorgs, vacations, general life / work busyness.

Next time you ask why your recruiter took a while to respond, ask yourself why you sometimes take a while to respond. More often than not, it's just that stuff came up that has nothing to do with the other person.

----

So with all of that as preamble, let's see if we can answer some quick questions.

I made a mistake in coding. Am I going to get rejected?

See above. Do most other candidates make that mistake (or similar mistakes)? [FYI: on a medium difficulty or higher problem, very few people solve the problem "perfectly."

I'm preparing for a Microsoft phone interview. What should I focus on?

See above. The fact that it's a Microsoft interview, or that it's a phone interview, is mostly irrelevant. Look at software engineering interview questions. If there are particularly points of knowledge you're struggling with (e.g., you forgot how to traverse a binary tree), you should study those. You shouldn't worry too much about who is giving the interview.

How long do I have to solve an interview question?

This is sort of like asking how long you have to solve a math problem. Arithmetic problems are solvable in seconds, basic calculus problems in minutes, and complex theory in hours, weeks, or even years.

For a specific interview problem, taking "too long" might indicate poor performance, but that amount of time varies significantly across problems.

When my buddy interviewed with Apple, he was asked to solve 3 questions in 30 minutes. I didn't even finish one problem in that amount of time. Do I have any chance?

My imaginary 10 year old niece solved 5 math problems in only 10 minutes, while my math professor has been working on this other math problem for a year now. My imaginary niece, therefore, is smarter than my math teacher.

The above question makes about as much sense as this statement.

Unless you and your friend were asked the same interview questions, you really can't conclude anything from your experiences.

My friend heard back from Google the day after his interview, but it's been five days and I haven't heard a word. Is this just Google's way of rejecting me?

Nope. Doesn't mean a thing.

I am an experienced candidate. Will I held to the same standards and asked the same kinds of questions?

More or less, yes. Depending on who you talk to, experience either helps you on standard coding / algorithm questions (since you've been coding for longer) or hurts you (since you're further away from these academicy topics).

The slightly unfortunate reality is that interviewers tend to repeat their favorite questions across candidates, so, all else being equal, someone with 30 years or experience will probably be asked the same things as a recent graduate.

However, there will probably be somewhat higher expectations when it comes to behavioral / resume questions.

How long does Facebook take to respond after an interview?

See earlier section about recruiters. Asking how long they take to respond is like asking how long you take to respond to an email. The company may target responding within a week (which is a fairly standard amount of time), but delays can happen for all sorts of reasons.

---

I hope this little window into the interview process helps you next time you wonder why something happened the way it did. Mostly, it's just people running around doing whatever they want. Yep - that's it. There is no system.

Shameless plug (but, hey, lots of candidates swear by it): Just because there's no grand, overall system doesn't mean you can't prep for your interviews. You can and you should. Check out Cracking the Coding Interview, 5th Edition: 150 Programming Questions and Solutions. Lots of advice, and none of the fluffy "be the best you can be!" stuff. Straight, to the point, and lots and lots of cool coding problems.

Officially on sale! Cracking the Coding Interview, 5th Edition

The 5th edition of the best-selling programming interview prep book, Cracking the Coding Interview: 150 Programming Interview Questions and Solutions, is officially on sale. And even better - Amazon is currently running a 20% sale on the book!

Now, I know you're used to new editions being a couple little fixes here, packaged in a shiny new edition probably for no other reason than to get you to buy your own copy rather than borrow your friend's. That is not what this is.

The fifth edition of Cracking the Coding Interview is a massive expansion of the fourth edition. It added 200 pages of content, growing the length of the book from 308 pages to 508. A more complete description of the many, many changes are below.

As before, Cracking the Coding Interview focuses on software engineering interviews. If you're looking for a start-to-end guide on how to get a job a tech company, pick up my second book, The Google Resume: How to Prepare for a Career and Land a Job at Apple, Microsoft, Google, or any Top Tech Company. The book is rated 4.5 stars after 22 reviews and can be purchased from Amazon or any Barnes and Noble store.

Massive Expansion of Introductory Chapters

The book opens with about 70 pages of content you need to know before diving into an interview question. This includes:

• How do companies evaluate you?
• How do you prepare for behavioral questions?
• What happens behind the scenes at Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Apple and Facebook? How does the process work? Who is evaluating you?
• How do you write a great resume?
• How do you tackle tricky technical questions?
• What happens when you get a question wrong?
• What should you evaluate in an offer?
• How do you negotiate an offer?

Expanded Chapter Intros

Each chapter opens with a discussion of core skills and technique for solving each type of question. This ranges from 3 to 10 pages, depending on the complexity of the topic. As always, we assume that you know the really basic stuff, so you don't need to wade through stuff like what a tree is.

Rewritten Solutions (+ 24 new questions) Every questions has been carefully reviewed and the vast majority have been partially or fully re-written. New solutions were added to existing problems, and 24 new questions were also added.

As before, fully compilable Java solutions (ready for import into Eclipse) can be downloaded. The download is hosted on CrackingTheCodingInterview.com.

Website / Forum (CrackingTheCodingInterview.com)

Interview problems are best with some discussion, so we've created a website / forum built around the book. If you have questions or additional solutions you'd like to consider, post them there to discuss them with other readers. The java solutions can also be downloaded from there.

Buy it now:

• Cracking the Coding Interview, v5 [Amazon]
• The Google Resume [Amazon]
• Cracking the Coding Interview, v5 [India / Pothi]
• The Google Resume [India / Flipkart]

The 5 Big Questions You Need to Ask about Your Resume

Through CareerCup's resume review, my time at Google and other companies, and the occasional favor for a friend, I've seen hundreds of resumes. Each time, I see the same mistakes. I'm not talking about subtle little wording tricks; I'm talking about the massive issues that all too many resumes have. Think your resume is "good enough?" Check it against these five big questions.

#1. Is your resume one page (or at most two pages for 10+ years of experience)?

Did you know that longer resumes usually make you look less experienced?

When you include just one page of content, you’re including, by definitely, the “top one page” of experience. Less impressive accomplishments just don’t make the cut. But when you expand into two or three pages of experience, the quality of the average item on your resume drops substantially.

And since resume screeners only skim your resume for 15 – 30 seconds, it’s the “average” that matters, not the sum of all your accomplishments.

(Still disagree? Read Less Is More: Eight Reasons Why You Need a One Page Resume.)

#2. Did you use a resume template, or did you build your own?

If you’re opening up a new page in Microsoft Word, bolding some headings for your job titles, and typing your accomplishments under them in bullets, you’re almost surely making a mistake.

Your resume will wind up looking sloppy and unprofessional. And, perhaps even worse, you’ll probably waste a lot of space. Resume formats are often designed to fit as much as possible on the screen while still being clean and well-organized.

Unless you’re a whiz with Word and with design, you should just use one of the many resume templates out there.

(Here are the two resume templates that I use.)

#3. Are your bullets too long?

As mentioned earlier, resume screeners don’t read your resume; they skim it. The process takes about 15 – 30 seconds per resume and is designed to decide on interview / no interview. Bullets that look like a paragraph are skipped in this process. They take too long to read and too long to really digest.

If you want to make sure your bullets are read, keep them to a mix of one line and two line bullets.

#4. Is your resume accomplishment-oriented or responsibility-oriented?

The work you were assigned to do is sort of, well, boring. I want to know what you actually accomplished.

Consider the difference between these two bullets for a Program Manager:

1. Design features for Amazon S3 and oversee development of the features across software engineers and testers.
2. Designed the SS Frontline feature, managed its development, and led its integration across three products, leading to a $100 million increase in revenue.

The first one doesn’t tell me much more than what I already knew from the job title. The second bullet, however, shows me that you had an impact.

#5. What did you not include?

When I’m reviewing a resume, one question I like to ask is if there’s anything (major or minor, professional or academic, serious or “just for fun,” coding / PM / etc focused or not) that they didn’t include. All too often, the person cut something that’s pretty major – possibly what would have been the “wow” part of their portfolio.

Last month, I was reviewing the resume of a PM at Microsoft who had neglected to mention on her resume that she’d started a video gaming company “on the side,” where she hired and managed several testers and developers. Why didn’t she mention it? Because they hadn’t launched yet.

The belief that you can only list something on resume if some requirement or other is met is common.

When I reviewed resumes after the PennApps hackathon, about half of the CS students left out a major project. Of those, half thought that they couldn’t mention a project because it was for class, and the other half thought that they couldn’t mention a project because it wasn’t for a class.

Ultimately, forget the rules of what does and doesn’t belong on a resume. If it makes you look better, include it.

............

Want more guidance on how to improve your resume and land a job at a great tech company? Read The Google Resume: How to Prepare for a Career and Land a Job at Apple, Microsoft, Google, or any Top Tech Company.

Get your free, advanced, signed copy of Cracking the Coding Interview, v5

UPDATE: Share this with your friends to improve your chances at winning a free copy!

UPDATE 2: Raffle has completed! Thanks for playing :)

Since everything is best in rhyming form, I will open this with a poem from an anonymous (and awesome) reader:

If you've ever wondered how to navigate the Amazon forest,

Or pondered how at a Google or Microsoft interview to do your best;

If you think that being at Apple means biting more than you can chew.

Then sit back, relax, and say, "Yahoo!"

For the fifth Edition of Cracking the Coding Interview,

Is on well on its way to being out, so, "Phew!"

Countless hours have been poured into the book,

The new version is much-improved, so pray, take a look.

One five zero problems and tons of useful advice,

On how to, in the technical hot seat, be like ice.

Folks, from the author of The Google Resume,

Comes another gem this Fall your way!

So if arrays have you feeling out of bounds,

And you're pointedly null on how "linked list" sounds

If  your worst character is brought out by strings

And recursion, tears to your eyes, repeatedly brings.

If trees and graphs along with stacks and queues

Push you to the edge, make you pop, or perturb your views

And bit manipulations along with the byte-sized brain-teaser,

Have your brain locked up - like it's in the freezer,

Then ladies and gents do pickup this hot paperback,

For it's sure to thaw you and put you on the right study track!

Yep, that's right. The long awaited Cracking the Coding Interview v5 is almost out. And we're going to be giving out a limited number of free, signed copies to lucky readers.

Want to snag your copy? Enter here for your chance to win a copy.

What's Changed?

To be succinct, a lot! This is not your "I want people to buy a new copy, so I'll make a few quick changes and call it a new edition" sort of thing. This is a totally re-written, much expanded, new edition.

• Grown to 506 pages in v5, up from 308 pages in v4. (And no, I didn't pull the ol' college make-the-margins-bigger trick.) The images on the right are not to scale. :)
• Much expanded sections on resume design, interview prep, behavioral prep, mastering technical questions.
• More complete sections introducing each chapter.
• 24 new questions.
• Plus, many many additional / alternative / rewritten solutions.

The focus of the book is still Software Engineering interview prep. If you're looking for a more general start-to-end guide to getting a job at a tech company, check out my second book: The Google Resume: How to Prepare for a Career and Land a Job at Apple, Microsoft, Google, or any Top Tech Company.

Enter here for a free, signed copy of Cracking the Coding Interview.

Why I Don't Support "One Laptop Per Child"

Recently, during a five week trip to Africa, I got the opportunity to visit a school and a hospital in Mayange, a rural town in Rwanda. Mayange is a beneficiary of both the UN's Millennium Villages Project and the One Laptop Per Child program. The Millennium Villages Project is an effort to eliminate poverty in which the UN selects 12 of the poorest villages in different climates in Africa to improve education, healthcare, agriculture, business and other key components of a thriving society. These 12 towns acts as pilots in a greater poverty elimination effort. From what the people we met told us, the impact of Millennium Villages has been striking. The impact of One Laptop Per Child, which aims to put an ultra-cheap ($165 + training and maintenance costs) laptop in the hands of each child (not family, and not school), has been a bit more questionable. This is particularly true when you look at its per-dollar impact.

The School

It was around noon on a Tuesday when we arrived at the rural school. Today was a half day, which they do twice a week to keep costs low. The morning students were returning home as the afternoon students were arriving to take their places. Each kid was carrying his or her papers or books. No one had their laptop. Where were these $165 laptops? Left at home. Even if they wanted to use their laptops, they couldn't do much with them. As is common in this town, the internet hadn't been working for several days.

The teacher who showed us around was proud to show off the gadgets. Apparently the kids love taking pictures of themselves with the built-in camera. That was as far as the "impact" he mentioned went.

The school lunch program, however, he praised. By giving otherwise hungry students free lunch at school, attendance had increased dramatically. You want kids to get an education? Feed them.

The Hospital

The true lost opportunity for OLPC funds really hits you when you go to the hospital. This town, as a beneficiary of Millennium Villages, was one of the lucky ones. They had adequately trained nurses. Refrigerators to store medicines. Equipment to test people for malaria and HIV, and the drugs to treat them. And, perhaps most significantly, birth control.

Our guide was nearly boastful about the family planning clinic, and he awkwardly  pushed us through the crowd of women awaiting treatment. He whipped out a packet of birth control pills and explained to us how they worked: "Green pills for three weeks. Pinks pills for one. Don't get them confused. Is very bad."

In just a few years, the usage of birth control pills had increased from non-existent to over 60%. When families have just two extra mouths to feed, instead of seven or eight, children have more food, more clean water, and more medicine.

Healthcare premiums are just $2 per person per year (true cost is $10 - $20), but most people still can't afford that.

The Impact

No doubt, OLPC has added value to the students it has reached. The question though, is how much? Is this really the best use of limited resources?

Education is critical to reducing poverty, and certainly, technology is a means to access nearly infinite educational resources online. But if we give one laptop per family, or set up a computer lab in each school, we would touch far more people for far less money.

The choice comes down to this: do you give a family with six children six laptops? Or do you give them one laptop to share, and then cover the healthcare premiums of another 500 children?

Ask Gayle: How do you negotiate offers for the big companies?

Gayle, I recently got an offer from a major software company, but it's not quite what I was hoping for. How can I negotiate my offer?

~ PV

First of all, you're off to a great start by just trying to negotiate. Most people don't even do that.

Much of the standard negotiation advice applies here:

• Having competing offers will give you leverage
• Know what you can get an other companies (goes back to the competing offers thing)
• Being able to quantify your value to the company - what can you do for them?
• Think big picture. Maybe you can't get a salary bump, but perhaps you can get a better signing bonus. Or maybe you can get relocation in cash, instead of the company directly paying for it. Or, perhaps you can get an agreement for an earlier review or opportunity for promotion.

One thing to note with big companies like Microsoft is that they often have "levels" for employees, with a small salary range for anyone at that level. You have some wiggle room within that range, but larger bumps may require jumping up to the next level. You'll need to understand what you need to demonstrate to reach that level, and use examples from your past to demonstrate that you have these qualities.

How to Get Beyond the Black Hole - and Land that Interview

We call it many things - online job applications, the resume database, etc - but perhaps the most applicable is the "Black Hole." Thousands of job seekers submit their resumes each year, hoping to get the chance to interview. But the reality is that standing out from a stack of resumes is extremely difficult. So how do you stand out in a stack of hundreds of resumes? Ideally, you don't. Instead, you find more creative avenues in.

I wrote an article for CNBC offering suggestions on how candidates can land an interview with their dream company. Read it here.

Reneging on a Job Offer - Is It Ever Acceptable?

A candidate recently came to me seeking the advice for the following situation: A few weeks after accepting a software development position with Dell, he received an offer from Microsoft as a Program Manager. This was his dream job, and his dream company, but he would have to turn it down. Or would he? I wanted to tell him to do “the right thing” and turn down the dream offer, but I couldn’t. Why? Because, about seven years ago, I was in a nearly identical situation. And I did the so-called “wrong” thing.

In 2004, I was interviewing for an internship. I didn’t want to go back to Microsoft – three internships there was plenty. Google and Apple had both rejected me, though Apple told me that I was their “#2” candidate for this position. So, though I was pretty lukewarm on the position and would never join there fulltime, I accepted the IBM position. I had stopped all other interviews and had every intention of completing the internship.

Then, six weeks before the internship was supposed to start, I got an email from the Apple team. Their #1 candidate just reneged. Was I still available? This was my dream job. I loved the company. I loved the product. I loved the team. So I said yes.

The After Math

Here’s where I’m supposed to say that it caused some horrific impact on my career. Recruiters no longer trusted me. I got blacklisted. And ever since then I’ve regretted my decision, or something like that.

But the truth is that none of that happened.

IBM was annoyed, but they replaced me. Word didn’t get out about that awful thing I did. Even the other IBM recruiters had no idea what had happened. And why would they? It’s a huge company and one candidate reneging is just not that big of a deal.

But it was a big, big deal to me.

Should you renege?

I can’t – and won’t – advise anyone to renege. It can certainly hurt your reputation. You may be seen by others as unreliable. People who know about the situation may hesitate to recommend you to a company in the future. And, of course, there is definitely an unethical component to it. You’re breaking a promise, and a promise you made in a professional context. That’s never good.

At the same time, I do feel that much like an awesome sales person will recommend a competitor’s product if it’s clearly a better fit for you, an awesome recruiter should understand the position you’re in. This is your dream job – you don’t just walk away from it. (And, in fact, the Apple recruiter was supportive when their original candidate reneged – and would have eagerly interviewed him in the future.)

Additionally, unless the original offer was from a very small company or for a very high level position, the impact on the company probably pales in comparison to the impact on you. Is it really so wrong to renege?

Rather than the knee-jerk “ZOMG-it’s-wrong” response, think seriously here. What is so special about committing to a job offer?

So, what’s so special about this promise?

You shouldn’t promise to see a movie with friends, but then shop around for better plans. You shouldn’t get engaged if you’re not sure you want to get married. And you shouldn’t offer a friend a ride to the airport if you don’t have a car. But, sometimes your parents unexpectedly come to town, sometimes relationships fail, and sometimes cars break down. Life happens.

So let’s all move away from this absolutist “it’s always wrong” mindset and be honest: we break promises all the time and we’re okay with that. Life happens, and things come up. And sometimes that thing is your dream job. Why do we accept broken promises in other cases, but think that it’s always wrong for a job offer?

Why Your Interview Performance is Impossible to Judge

When I was at Google, I referred a number of candidates, and ran a little (informal) experiment. How well could people judge their performance? After each candidate completed their interview, I’d ask them how they did. Then, I’d look up their actual performance. And guess what? There was no correlation. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch.

[Update: here's some more data on this.]

Why is it so hard to know how you did? The answer comes in how candidates try to judge themselves, which is typically one of two ways:

Method #1: “I know I did well / poorly because my interviewer was friendly / unfriendly.”

One guy I knew, Alex*, told me he was sure he bombed his interview because the interviewer seemed so unhappy with him. Later, he discovered that he would not only receive an offer, but he was the best candidate that the interviewer had ever seen.

What Alex didn’t know is that this interviewer was not what we’d call a “smiley happy” person. And that’s the problem with interpreting performance from a stranger’s attitude. You’re comparing them to what you’re used to, not to how the interviewer usually acts.

Additionally, a good interviewer should be friendly to anyone, even a poor performer.

Method #2: “I know I did well / poorly because of how slowly / quickly / correctly / incorrectly I solved a problem.”

Imagine a professor passes back a test and you see in big red ink the score “45.” Did you do well or poorly? You have no idea, of course, without knowing how the rest of the class did. The same goes for an interview. You can’t assess your performance on a question without knowing what’s “normal.”

Interviews are not evaluated on an absolute basis with respect to either speed or correctness. Struggling your way through one problem but eventually getting the right answer might indicate that you did extremely well, or poorly. It all depends on how other candidates did (which, of course, you don’t know).

Note: this only applies to “skill based” questions, like programming and algorithms. We’ll discuss behavioral questions later.

So how can you evaluate your performance?

As we’ve discussed, you can’t interpret much from the interviewer’s reactions. However, if you could gauge how difficult a question is, you might be able to guess at how you did. One way to do this is to ask a number of friends the same questions. If they solve it in half the time that you do, then you might be able to conclude that you did poorly.

What about behavioral questions?

Behavioral questions are a bit easier to evaluate performance for two reasons:

• Interviewer Attitude: The interviewer’s attitude is a bit more meaningful here, but you should look for changes in their attitude. If your interviewer gets more engaged during your responses, or less engaged, then that might be an indicator of performance.
• Response Quality: Unlike programming questions, behavioral questions don’t vary drastically in difficulty. Struggling to respond to several of them is an indicator of poor performance. You may recognize when you really bombed a question. But, even there, I would be cautious about making assumptions.

Remember this when you’re walking out of your next interview, or when a friend tells you they did horribly. Be cautiously optimistic, because you won’t know until you know.

10 Secrets To Getting A Job At Apple, Google Or Microsoft

Forbes recently posted an article by me called "10 Secrets to Getting a Job at Apple, Google, or Microsoft." Here are three of my favorites:

Start Something: Launching a small tech company, or just a project, can demonstrate virtually everything a tech firm wants to see: field expertise, passion for technology, initiative, leadership and creativity. Don’t have software development experience? Not to worry – you can hire an outsourced development team from sites like odesk and elance

Create an Online Portfolio: Almost everyone can benefit from a portfolio. A simple web site with a description of your major accomplishments (both inside and outside of work) can provide more context than what your resume can provide. Recruiters may reference this after seeing your resume, but they might stumble across your portfolio online and give you a call.

Rehearse Your Stories: One of the best ways to improve your overall interview performance is to practice your “stories.” For each major accomplishment, brainstorm ways that you showed leadership, demonstrated influence, or overcame challenges. Rehearsing these responses aloud will help you to more effectively discuss what you did and why it mattered.

Read the rest of the article for the full list. Or check out my book, The Google Resume, from which each of these tips were borrowed.

As an addendum to this, I'd like to add: ask for help. There are people in your field (or your desired field) who can help you. They can suggest ways to get relevant experience through projects, volunteer work, or starting a part-time job. They can help you craft your resume to bring out your best accomplishments. And they can help you prepare for the interviews. Don't do it alone - ask them for help.

More than a number: How much does Google care about GPA?

Gayle, I'm currently a junior at Cal Poly, and my GPA isn't great. I estimate when I graduate it'll be between a 2.7 and 3.1. Will that put me out of the running for Google and Microsoft? Do those companies really have a minimum GPA requirement? Is there anything I can do to offset my low GPA to increase my chances of getting hired?

~ Alex

Not only is there not GPA requirement, but you don't even necessarily need to have gone to college. I worked with a number of people at Google who had dropped out of college. Does that mean GPA doesn't matter? Not quite.

Both Google and Microsoft will try to use any available metrics to predict whether or not you'd be a successful employee. Once you've interviewed, your interview performance matters much, much more than anything on your resume. In fact, I never even remember GPA being discussed after someone's interview.

In the resume selection process, GPA can certainly have an impact, but it's not the only factor. Ultimately, companies are looking for a "track record of achievement," or signs that you're smart and that you can code. That can be one or more of these factors:

• Attending a good school
• Internships / jobs at other "good" companies
• A strong GPA (above 3.0)
• Big / cool projects (course projects, open source work, things you've done 'for fun')
• Other technical work: TAing, etc

If you don't have a great GPA, that's okay. Many people get interviewed with low GPAs, but they compensate with other projects and work. In fact, that's exactly what I did (my GPA varied between a 3.0 and a 3.3).

One final thing: if you're trying to compensate for a lower GPA with other projects, the quality of your resume tends to make a bigger difference. After all, if the numbers are telling a great story, it's that much more important that you learn how to.

Read our resume tips on the links below, or check out CareerCup's professional resume review service.

• Great Resumes for Software Engineers
• Less Is More: Eight Reasons Why You Need a One Page Resume
• Less Is More: How I Cut My Resume To One Page

What's the "Right" Programming Language for an Interview?

Hi Gayle, Does it matter what language you use in an interview with Google/Facebook/Amazon? Most of my recent experience has been with C# and thats the language I'm most comfortable with. I do have prior experience with C and C++ although in an interview would prefer to use C#. I'm not sure if that would be seen as a negative.

~ Nick

Like most things in interviews, it depends on your interviewer. Theoretically, as long as your resume lists C / C++, your interviewer could ask you to code in those.  And they might, if they happen to have a favorite question that involved C or C++.

However, in general, that doesn't happen. Most candidates code in Java, and most interviewers are fine with that. C# is pretty close to Java - so close that your interviewers may not notice or care about your coding C#.

Still, I'd recommend that you brush up a bit on the few syntactical differences between C# and Java, so that you can code in Java for your interviews.  Just explain to your interviewers the situation - most wouldn't care.

Less Is More: Eight Reasons Why You Need a One Page Resume

(Don't forget to check out Part 2 - Less Is More: How I Cut My Resume to One Page.) Having reviewed resumes for five years, first for Google and now for CareerCup's resume review service, I've frequently gotten resumes from software engineers as long as eight pages.  In fact, the average resume length that I get through CareerCup is probably 2.5 pages.   Yikes!

Now, I know that they think that they've probably really impressed their resume screener.  After all, if they can fill up three (or eight) pages, they must have a ton of experience, right?

Not quite.  In fact, almost anyone can blabber on for multiple pages - and, frankly, it tends to be the people with less experience who feel the need to have such lengthy resumes.

Please, don't do it.  Stick to just one page if you have less than 10 years of experience.  If you have more than 10 years of experience, a 1.5 - 2 pages is allowable (although even there it may not be ideal).

Here are eight reasons why a short and sweet resume is best.

1. Many resume screeners will automatically toss multi-page resumes. I may not agree with that absolutism.  After all, I want to find the best people, not the best resume writers.  But,  given how many people are absolutist about one page resumes (though most make greater allowances for people with more experience), do you really want to get ruled out for such a simple thing?

2. Even if people "accept" a multi-page resume, they may groan when they get one. First impressions matter.  Do you really want someone's first impression of your resume to be "ugh?"  I'll be honest - that's my first thought when I see a three pager.

And, consciously or subconsciously, the "ugh" reaction may make someone itch for an excuse to toss out your resume just so that they'll stop having to read your resume.

3. Longer resumes do not make people assume that you have more experience. I've seen no correlation between the length of resumes and the amount of experience people have. Just because you have a lot more content on your resume does not mean that you have more experience.  Hey, when I was a freshman in college, I had a three page resume. (Yes, it was pretty awful.)

4. Just because your resume is longer does not mean people read more. Recruiters generally spend a fixed amount of time on your resume - and it's only around 15 or 30 seconds.  They do not spend longer on your resume simply because you decided to waste their time by writing a lot more.  What matters is how much - and what - they read, not how much happens to be on a page (see #3).

5. Long blocks of text scares people. My first reaction when I see five jobs with twenty bullets each is to just skip that section entirely. After all, I have a huge pile of resumes to read, I just need to make yes/no decisions on interviewing, and it's so much easier to just toss your resume than wade through massive amounts of text.

6. Longer resumes -> more dilution -> worse impression Think of it this way. Who is a better student?

• Alex: A-, A+, A-, A
• Pat: C, B+, C+, A-, B-, A+, B, B, A-, C, B-, A

It turns out that, although Alex seems like  a stronger student, he and Pat have actually gotten the exact same grades.   However, Alex has listed his best five, while Pat wanted to "show off his experience" by listing all his classes.

Your multi-page resume is like that. You've taken your 'A' content and diluted with B and C content. I walk away thinking you're a B candidate, rather than an A.

7. Longer resumes cause people to miss the most important stuff When you have lots of mediocre content on your resume, not only will this detract from my impression of you - but I may never even get to the best stuff.  When you have a few lines about founding a company or starting some major project, but it's buried in three pages of text, I may never see it.  Again, I don't read your resume.  I simply glance at it for 15 - 30 seconds.

8. You are not THAT awesome. Ironically, when I tell people they need to cut down their resume, I get the most push back from people who aren't all that impressive, claiming that they just have  so much experience that they can't cut it down to one page.  Sorry, but you're not that awesome.

Anywhere that you're applying will have a lot of people - perhaps even most - with a lot more experience, or more impressive experience, than you.  And they all manage to fit it on one page.

And, really, you can fit a lot on one page if you understand what you really need to say.  Want an example?  Read Less Is More: How I Cut My Resume To One Page.

The idea of the short and concise resume is to give people the best possible impression given that they're only briefly glance at your resume for 15 - 30 seconds. You'll do that best by limiting it to just your A+ content - through a one page resume.