Recruiter google salary: Google Recruiter Salary | $127K-$329K+

Google Recruiter Salary | $127K-$329K+

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Given Google sometimes issues offers with an irregular vesting schedule (33%, 33%, 22%, 12%), the average total compensation is calculated by dividing the total stock grant evenly by 4

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Vesting Schedule

38%

YR 1

32%

YR 2

20%

YR 3

10%

YR 4

Stock Type

RSU

At Google, Main RSUs are subject to a 4-year vesting schedule:

• 38% vests in the 1st-year (3. 17% monthly)

• 32% vests in the 2nd-year (2.67% monthly)

• 20% vests in the 3rd-year (1.67% monthly)

• 10% vests in the 4th-year (0.83% monthly)

Google commonly refers to RSU as GSU (Google Stock Unit). Although the name is different, it is the same as RSU’s. Google’s Vesting Schedule may vary between monthly and quarterly vesting depending on the number of shares you recieve: less than 32 GSUs (Annually), 32 – 63 GSUs (Semi-annually), 64 – 159 GSUs (Quarterly) and 160+ GSUs (Monthly).

33%

YR 1

33%

YR 2

22%

YR 3

12%

YR 4

Stock Type

RSU

At Google, Main RSUs are subject to a 4-year vesting schedule:

• 33% vests in the 1st-year (2.75% monthly)

• 33% vests in the 2nd-year (2.75% monthly)

• 22% vests in the 3rd-year (1.83% monthly)

• 12% vests in the 4th-year (1.00% monthly)

Google commonly refers to RSU as GSU (Google Stock Unit). Although the name is different, it is the same as RSU’s. Google’s Vesting Schedule may vary between monthly and quarterly vesting depending on the number of shares you recieve: less than 32 GSUs (Annually), 32 – 63 GSUs (Semi-annually), 64 – 159 GSUs (Quarterly) and 160+ GSUs (Monthly).

50%

YR 1

28%

YR 2

12%

YR 3

10%

YR 4

Stock Type

RSU

At Google, Main RSUs are subject to a 4-year vesting schedule:

• 50% vests in the 1st-year (4.17% monthly)

• 28% vests in the 2nd-year (2.33% monthly)

• 12% vests in the 3rd-year (1.00% monthly)

• 10% vests in the 4th-year (0.83% monthly)

Google commonly refers to RSU as GSU (Google Stock Unit). Although the name is different, it is the same as RSU’s. Google’s Vesting Schedule may vary between monthly and quarterly vesting depending on the number of shares you recieve: less than 32 GSUs (Annually), 32 – 63 GSUs (Semi-annually), 64 – 159 GSUs (Quarterly) and 160+ GSUs (Monthly).

36%

YR 1

28%

YR 2

20%

YR 3

16%

YR 4

Stock Type

RSU

At Google, Main RSUs are subject to a 4-year vesting schedule:

• 36% vests in the 1st-year (3.00% monthly)

• 28% vests in the 2nd-year (2.33% monthly)

• 20% vests in the 3rd-year (1.67% monthly)

• 16% vests in the 4th-year (1.33% monthly)

Google commonly refers to RSU as GSU (Google Stock Unit). Although the name is different, it is the same as RSU’s. Google’s Vesting Schedule may vary between monthly and quarterly vesting depending on the number of shares you recieve: less than 32 GSUs (Annually), 32 – 63 GSUs (Semi-annually), 64 – 159 GSUs (Quarterly) and 160+ GSUs (Monthly).

25%

YR 1

25%

YR 2

25%

YR 3

25%

YR 4

Stock Type

RSU

At Google, Main RSUs are subject to a 4-year vesting schedule:

• 25% vests in the 1st-year (2. 08% monthly)

• 25% vests in the 2nd-year (2.08% monthly)

• 25% vests in the 3rd-year (2.08% monthly)

• 25% vests in the 4th-year (2.08% monthly)

Google commonly refers to RSU as GSU (Google Stock Unit). Although the name is different, it is the same as RSU’s. Google’s Vesting Schedule may vary between monthly and quarterly vesting depending on the number of shares you recieve: less than 32 GSUs (Annually), 32 – 63 GSUs (Semi-annually), 64 – 159 GSUs (Quarterly) and 160+ GSUs (Monthly).

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FAQ

What is the highest Recruiter salary at Google?

The highest paying salary package reported for a Recruiter at Google sits at a yearly total compensation of $329,175. This includes base salary as well as any potential stock compensation and bonuses.

How much do Google Recruiter employees get paid?

The median yearly total compensation reported at Google for the Recruiter role is $167,000.

Google Recruiter Salary (July 2023)

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Updated July 21, 2023

$95,669

To create our salary estimates, Zippia starts with data published in publicly available sources such as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Foreign Labor Certification Data Center (FLC) Show More

$24.7 hourly rate

Entry-level Google recruiter salary

$73,000 yearly

$73,00010%

$95,669Median

$124,00090%

How much does Google pay recruiters?

The average salary for Google recruiters is $95,669 per year. Google recruiter salaries range between $73,000 to $124,000 per year. Google recruiters earn 86% more than the national average salary for recruiters of $51,374.

Location impacts how much a recruiter at Google can expect to make. Recruiters at Google make the most in Mountain View, CA, Cambridge, MA, and Boulder, CO.

How much does Google pay recruiters by location?

Google pays recruiters the most in Mountain View, CA, Cambridge, MA, and Boulder, CO. Additionally, cities like New York and Kirkland also report highly competitive salaries for recruiters at Google.

Recruiter Google salary by location

Rank	City	Avg. Salary	Hourly Rate
1	Mountain View, CA	$121,663	$58. 49
2	Cambridge, MA	$116,492	$56.01
3	Boulder, CO	$111,710	$53.71
4	New York, NY	$111,548	$53.63
5	Kirkland, WA	$103,116	$49.58
6	Austin, TX	$101,889	$48.99
7	Chicago, IL	$95,891	$46. 10
8	Pittsburgh, PA	$95,847	$46.08

Highest-paid Google recruiters by job level

Show more salaries

Recruiter salary at Google competitors

Show more recruiter salaries at Google competitors.

Google recruiter salary FAQ

How much does Google pay recruiters an hour?

Google pays recruiters $25 an hour, on average.

What is the starting salary for a recruiter at Google?

The starting salary for a Google recruiter is $73,000 per year, or $35 an hour.

How much does Google pay compared to Meta?

Google pays $51,374 per year on average compared to Meta, which pays $108,128. That works out to $25 per hour at Google, compared to $52 per hour at Meta.

Have more questions? See all answers to common company questions.

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• Google Recruiter Salary

Updated July 21, 2023

How much it cost me to get into Google and get promoted without working there a single day / Habr

December 2020, the second wave of Covid is in full swing I am a remote PM in an American company. After my father’s funeral in Tbilisi, I was in prostration, I had to return to the USA and somehow change my position, because the money I earned was clearly not enough for a normal life. The very memories of my previous search caused me a cold chill and some inner voice quietly whispered: “wait, now there is a pandemic, many people dream of this, somehow get out …”.

Every day I tried to kill the pissant in me, and convinced that the crisis is always new opportunities, but the next day, he still crawled back and whined familiar phrases to nausea.

I registered a US number on Google Voice so that recruiters would start calling me and start sending out resumes. I sent out about a hundred adapted resumes and indicated on LinkedIn that I was actively looking for a job. Gradually, recruiters from small companies began to contact me, but I understood that the conditions in them would be at best 40% better than the current one, and this still did not solve my problems. Although it seemed that there were thousands of positions on LinkedIn, I had exhausted the main employers. I served mainly on Sr. Project Manager or Engineering Manager positions.

The realization came when I started reading teamblind. com – the best resource in the US for market analysis in IT and levels.fyi where you can see real salaries. I used to read Glassdoor, but the information on it is outdated.

It turned out that in the financial sector in the USA, which I was interested in, there are poor conditions and a toxic culture, the same in consulting except for companies from Big4 or MBB where you have to work long hours, but it is possible to receive 1+ million dollars a year by rising to partner. The most interesting were companies that call FAANG (Fb, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) sometimes use FAANGMULA instead of this list, rightly adding Microsoft, Uber, Lyft and Airbnb there – all of them are technological, innovative companies that not only create business products, but and technologies used all over the world. Companies that create de facto standards for the development of digital products, invest in scientific research, create legendary conditions for their employees, which attract the smartest engineers and scientists from all over the world.

Why waste time trying to get into a company that I’ll be transferring from anyway in a year or two?! On the other hand, the language did not turn to refuse real offers with a salary of 30-40% more than my current one.

But how do you get an interview at FAANGMULA? I’ve sent dozens of resumes to them before, but I’ve never received a response. I asked some people I knew who worked for these companies to make me a recommendation, but I got hints that they should be offered money or they were just reluctant to do so. The only reference they gave me was at Microsoft (Thanks to Sl.), but they never called me from there. I started to figure it out and found a service where for $50 you can get a reference to almost any big company, and then I generally found a way to do it for free – just anonymously ask about it in Blind, where there is a great community of people ready to help for free.

Voila – and in a week I get an interview with Amazon, Google, Facebook! Isn’t it a miracle?

In parallel, I agreed to an interview with everyone who called, for practice and experience, and, well, in case there was a special match with my Wishlist. And since, thanks to covid, it was possible to intervene online, this did not prevent me from working and preparing for the main events.

Of the interesting interviews I had in several banks. At City Bank, I was going to the position of senior vice president of digital lending development with a hundred engineers. During the interview, I was not asked ANY questions regarding my qualifications. They looked at my charisma, flexibility, and then verbally offered a good amount. Hell, if they select employees like that, then I’m sure there will be a lot of people there to deal with jokes and intrigues, but who will work, I thought, and refused to continue. In other banks and fintech startups, they started asking me in detail about specific algorithms, or the CEO interrupted everyone and started asking me about the details of Georgian cuisine. I think I got this far in all of these interviews because I didn’t take them seriously at first, and I wasn’t afraid to throw in a joke or ask a pointed question, and I was generally confident.

Another bank sent me an invitation for 4 interviews on the same day and one of the calls was at 8 am. I think it is strange that without approval they sent me such an early invitation. An hour later, I receive a letter from the recruiter asking for a morning call – I answer that “everything is OK, I have already received the invitation”, but it turned out that he asks to reschedule this call even earlier – to 7 in the morning. I agreed, and when I connected at 7 am, a bright yellow blonde in a business suit was waiting for me there. And this is in America at a distance! At that time, I already had a hundred interviews behind me, including Google, Fb, Amazon, and this was very different from the overall picture. What a signal she wanted to send me by scheduling an interview so early, in a suit at a distance, talking without a single smile. Perhaps in Europe or another country it could be normal, I myself love costumes, but definitely not in the USA. And yes, I didn’t pass the interview.

The first call with Google lasted 30 minutes, I talked about the current project and my experience. A day later, they sent me a letter notifying me that I had passed the screening with the recruiter, and then I was waiting for an interview with a Googler working in the role that I applied for. It was as if a bucket of cold water had been poured over me – I realized that everything was serious now, I had a chance to get an interview with the best company in the world, which I had dreamed of since my student days, when I filed a whole search engine for the Georgian Internet and won with her university olympiad.

Two weeks later, I was scheduled for stage II at Google – 45-60 minutes with another TPM (Technical Program Manager) where the interviewer touches on a couple of questions from all areas of the interview (design, teamwork, leadership, etc.) If he finds a weak spot , then that’s where it ends.

I was lucky that I began to prepare a month before I had my first call with Google, and therefore I had, in general, several months to fully prepare. I think that other guys, repeating my steps, will be able to get similar results.

I also passed this stage thanks to 6 sessions with different coaches and a lot of material worked out, and now I was waiting for a full day of the so-called onsite interview – five hour interviews in a row. Previously, they were held at the company’s office, but due to the pandemic, everything moved online. A similar format is now used by almost all large technical corporations. Each interviewer has his own goal, for which he (a) is looking for signals in the answers. For example, the focus may be to determine your relationship with users, and you will be asked about how you lead a project or manage changes, with the hope of hearing your approach to this in the answers.

3 out of 5 interviews were behavioral interviews where I was asked how I managed risks, resolved conflicts, gave the user more than they asked for, and when I made decisions without having enough data to do so.

Preparing for an interview, you need to understand what exactly your interviewers will try to hear in each session, and this, by the way, is not quite simple. In Amazon’s case, it’s a few specific principles from their 14 core leadership principles, but on Facebook, they don’t measure by their 5 principles. In the case of Google, I have adapted my answers by showing:

• The primacy of the user’s interests

• The ability to enter and exit conflicts with an emphasis on the interests and health of employees.

• When I didn’t know what to demonstrate in response to a specific question, I reduced it to one of Amazon’s leadership principles, and although this did not always fit the company’s culture, at least the answers had a strong logic. That is, the Amazonian principles have become such a basis for my interviewing strategy for all companies. Therefore, when aiming at FAANG, I advise you to start preparing with Amazon.

In short, my formula for success was

1. Coaching! This is probably the most important of all points, it is unlikely that I would have succeeded without it. I have tried different coaches and here are a few that I think are the best. For each company, before the interview, I took several sessions with coaches who have worked for many years in these companies and participated in hundreds of interviews. They honed my stories for behavioral interviews for a specific company. Write, I can advise superstars for Google and Amazon.

2. System design content – paid courses, YouTube videos, articles (3 months)

3. Training interviews with other applicants on the Igotanoffer.com, tryexponent.com portals. In total, I spent 20-30 sessions in which we took turns intervening and giving feedback for an hour.

Before the main day of the Google interview, I had a couple of weeks. I started the countdown. The focus of my whole life has become one – not to miss anything. I took a few days off and spent dozens of hours researching everything on the Internet that could help me, I read a few books, I studied and monitored chats and forums. Every day I had several interviews, whether they were training, with coaches or in real, but in secondary companies for me. A week later, I had a successful FB and Amazon screening, and I also needed to start preparing for their afternoon virtual-onsite interview.

If you don’t pass an interview with all these companies, then you can get to the next interview at best a year later, so I practically cut off communication not only with friends and acquaintances, but even with my son and mother, I left the house only for food and in the hall – to squeeze out horror and irritation.

I must pass! I must win!

The more I invested, the more important it became to me. I bought all the PM interviewing courses and honed my interviewing skills with people and just myself on paper. At some point, the interview with Google was postponed for a week and I remember how confusion visited me – there was more time than was originally planned. I stupidly did not know how to use it and what to study. For conceptual knowledge, this was not enough, but for patching holes too much. I started racing, am I wasting time correctly, or maybe I’m missing something ….

One evening, my girlfriend and I went out to dinner at a nearby bar and we struck up a conversation with a black, cheerful guy. At some point, he took out a business card and it turned out that he works at Google. When I told him about my case, he said – don’t be nervous now you are in good hands, you have a sponsor, call me tomorrow and we will discuss the next steps.

Miracle! Or is it some kind of sign? What is another sponsor?

When I wrote to him the next day, as you might expect, he sent me the standard recruitment information from Google and said that he would be happy to celebrate success with me (if successful), but now he can’t help. Such a gentleman, it’s still funny when I remember.

The interview was scheduled for Monday. The day before, it was a sunny March day, I decided to take a break – I walked around Brooklyn, ate ice cream, bought a couple of T-shirts. After lunch I returned home. It was starting to get dark, and there was a party going on in the bar by the house. As soon as I entered the entrance, a shootout began, where my neighbor was shot and someone was wounded. The shooters got into cars and the chase began.

That night I didn’t manage to rest and sleep, sirens and screams outside the windows, two noisy helicopters hung at a low altitude. At about three o’clock in the morning, I threw off my earplugs and trudged to the refrigerator to eat mint ice cream with a tablespoon. So much preparation and now everything can break down due to the fact that I just can’t sleep.

I stood in what my mother gave birth in the living room flooded with light from the next house in front of large windows and looked at the departing train, I understood that I had done my best, but this did not guarantee me good luck. Everything is the will of God, and tomorrow we must accept what will be, with gratitude, and move on. Whatever happened. And if I have to succeed, then I will not be prevented by any problems with the Internet, or fucking helicopters, or gaps in my training. And after many years, I fell on the wooden floor and prayed hard for a long time.

Thinking what ELSE I can do, I wandered off to make myself a background for a virtual call, but in the morning I still passed out so that I almost overslept the beginning.

A week of silence followed the interview. For every phone call and email, my heart began to flutter, but there was still no news, in the meantime, I was in full swing preparing for Amazon and Facebook. This time I was not so nervous, because I knew what to expect.

These days I did a poll on Blind to find out how many attempts it took on average for participants to get into FAANG. It turned out that one third of the respondents got there already after 9attempts! In Google, 1 out of 200 applicants gets a full interview cycle, and 1 out of 5 passes this interview with a positive result.

With Facebook, my mistake was that I did not work with a coach specifically for Facebook, as I was told that Facebook is a simplified version of the Google interview, but this is not true at least for the TPM role, which, unlike Google, contains also features Product Owner. In a systems design session, I was asked to build a food delivery system. After defining the requirements, I began to paint a high-level architecture, and I was asked to describe how I would prioritize the requirements and what kind of UI the application would have. I quickly responded and started to continue talking about the technical components, but from the follow-up questions, I realized that the interviewer wanted more information about the product, which I was not quite ready to answer. As a result, I did not pass the interview, but the impressions from FB were very positive.

The Amazon interview was a little different. First, I was asked to write an essay on one of two standard topics. I chose the topic – “what is the most innovative thing I have done in my life. ” I spent about 15 hours writing two drafts and reading all sorts of tips on how to do it right.

Interviews were chaotic, if on Google and Facebook I had 5-10 minutes between sessions for biological needs, then with Amazon the previous interviewer went beyond his hour and the next interviewer had to wait and listen to us. And so non-stop.

In a systems design session at Amazon, I was asked to build a security system for elevators in buildings. An interesting task, I have not seen such examples in the courses that I took. As a result, we had an hour-long discussion, in which I drew this diagram. The interviewer seemed to be very pleased.

An interesting insight that I made for myself was that it’s better not to talk about agile or in general about a specific management methodology. It was evident that in all three companies adherence to some fixed methodology was seen more as a limitation than a plus. In banks, by the way, it was the opposite, there were questions about the knowledge of Scrum and SAFe.

It’s been 10 days since the Google interview, I felt like I was going crazy, I was demotivated to stay at my current job, and I couldn’t understand what Google’s long silence meant.

I was completely burned out, had lunch, and then could not remember if I ate at all, not to mention the fact that I absolutely did not remember what exactly I ate. On the emotional plane, I also became like a robot, and it was not easy to get out of this state.

In the afternoon, a call came from an unknown number – a recruiter from Google called and slowly said that I received positive feedback from and she is preparing my case for the recruitment committee.

Hurray!!! I screamed and jumped around the apartment with happiness! I couldn’t believe I made it!

She asked me for a few contacts inside and outside of Google who to contact to get feedback on me, which should have solidified my case for the committee.

It was no less a miracle to find out that I also went to Amazon, but I was not going to work with them because there were many posts about their toxic culture and bad attitude towards employees. Amazon was important to me in order to have a competitive offer that would allow me to negotiate a better salary with Google.

I bought tickets to Mexico to relax and celebrate, and this could have been the point of my story, but it wasn’t. Three more interesting months of negotiations and additional interviews were waiting for me!

After the approval of the committee, I was assigned the fourth level. I did not quite understand what this meant and started the so-called team-matching calls. That is, after passing the interview, I got into the list of approximately 40 program managers who were interviewed, who met with different teams on Google, and if both parties liked each other, then the applicant was already made an official offer. Such is the Google Tinder, where some candidates could hang like that for up to a year.

The first two calls were with the hardware teams in the data center. It was a nightmare! The last thing I wanted to do in my life was to do this. And plus you had to move to rainy Seattle! At some point, I thought that it’s not so bad for me to work in the current company …

After a few calls, I did find an interesting team working in Silicon Valley. Hooray, there is a coincidence!

A recruiter called me and named the range that Google is willing to pay. Compensation there is determined by three components – a base salary with an annual bonus, company shares and a bonus when signing a contract. To be honest, the offer I was given was far from the numbers I was dreaming of at levels.fyi, and I turned to one of my coaches for advice. The coach advised me to apply to one company that (attention!) deals only with helping candidates in the FAANGMULA company with salary negotiations.

I left a request on the site and already in the morning of the next day I had a real “interrogation” to find out all the details of my relationship with Google and Amazon recruiters. Then they sent me four files with a description of the strategy and verbatim scripts of negotiations. After they called me and checked how I learned them and even helped to correct the speed of phrases and focus.

A small fragment of scripts:

Although Google is known for being very reluctant to revise the assigned levels, thanks to this company I managed to do this. It saved me a couple of years of my career and allowed me to get a much higher salary. It is interesting that the head of the team with which we chose each other became my great lawyer. For her, this meant that if I passed the 5th level, I would no longer be able to work with her, since her role was only for the 4th level. Thank her very much for this! It was unexpected and confirmed my positive expectations of Google culture.

It took two more interviews, but it wasn’t that difficult, the conversation was free-flowing, where I talked about my previous projects. No complex behavioral or technical issues.

Then new team-matching calls started. There were fewer interested teams, and then I didn’t like them, then I didn’t like them. A month has passed. There are no matches with the teams and no new calls either. Will they still AT ALL??

When will this all end?!

Whistling in ears again. I started to get nervous.

Days have passed, several teams have appeared. One in New York and one in Mountain View California, both liked me. The choice is not easy.

On the one hand, I have already settled down in NY, and I like it, on the other hand, this is a chance to live in Silicon Valley and, it seems, this is the best place for a career. When if not now!? Moreover, the team from the Valley was undergoing a transformation, in which I usually feel comfortable, and in general they were engaged in game consoles, which, after fintech and government services with ironed collars, generally seemed like a fairy tale. So the decision has been made! Another move of thousands of kilometers and a new life!

The last step was a simple background check and salary negotiation. My negotiation consultant connected to them and helped me with the answers in the chat. After each call, the scripts were updated. It is interesting that with Amazon I could not reach the end and get an offer, I can’t even imagine how much time it would take me to end up with them, these guys are very slow. In the end, without even having a written parallel offer from Amazon, my consultants helped me negotiate 50% better compensation.

My dream came true!

So maybe yours! After all, I’m a simple guy, living only two years in the US, with no local education, no special acquaintances. That’s why I wrote this and previous articles. I hope that in the coming years, there will be more guys from the former Soviet countries in top companies!

And finally some numbers

• My financial costs for the whole process are about $10,000

• Number of interviews and team-matchings with Google (not including negotiations with a recruiter) – 21 sessions

• Number of letters in correspondence with Google before receiving an offer – about 150

• Duration of the process from submitting a resume to starting work – 6 months

If you have any questions or feedback, join me on my instagram 90 003

How much did it cost me get into Google and get promoted without working there a single day – Personal experience on vc.

ru

We at Tech-Tech Time simply love exciting success stories, the path to which went through months of hard work, self-development and sleepless nights . This is exactly the story we learned from Andro Gorbushkin, a simple guy from Tbilisi.

24 719
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*We left the text of the story unchanged and edited.

December 2020, the second wave of Covid is in full swing. I am a remote PM in an American company. After my father’s funeral in Tbilisi, I was in prostration, I had to return to the USA and somehow change my position, because the money I earned was clearly not enough for a normal life. The very memories of my previous search caused me a cold chill and some inner voice quietly whispered: “wait, now there is a pandemic, many people dream of this, somehow get out …”.

Every day I tried to kill the pissant in me, and convinced that the crisis is always new opportunities, but the next day, he still crawled back and whined familiar phrases to nausea.

I registered a US number on Google Voice so that recruiters would start calling me and start sending out resumes. I sent out about a hundred adapted resumes and indicated on LinkedIn that I was actively looking for a job. Gradually, recruiters from small companies began to contact me, but I understood that the conditions in them would be at best 40% better than the current one, and this still did not solve my problems. Although it seemed that there were thousands of positions on LinkedIn, I had exhausted the main employers. I served mainly on Sr. Project Manager or Engineering Manager positions.

The realization came when I started reading teamblind.com – the best resource in the US for market analysis in IT and levels.fyi where you can see real salaries. I used to read Glassdoor, but the information on it is outdated.

It turned out that in the financial sector in the USA, which I was interested in, there are poor conditions and a toxic culture, the same in consulting except for companies from Big4 or MBB where you have to work long hours, but it is possible to receive 1+ million dollars a year by rising to partner. The most interesting were companies that call FAANG (Fb, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) sometimes use FAANGMULA instead of this list, rightly adding Microsoft, Uber, Lyft and Airbnb there – all of them are technological, innovative companies that not only create business products, but and technologies used all over the world. Companies that create de facto standards for the development of digital products, invest in scientific research, create legendary conditions for their employees, which attract the smartest engineers and scientists from all over the world.

Why waste time trying to get into a company that I’ll be transferring from anyway in a year or two?! On the other hand, the language did not turn to refuse real offers with a salary of 30-40% more than my current one.

But how do you get an interview at FAANGMULA? I’ve sent dozens of resumes to them before, but I’ve never received a response. I asked some people I knew who worked for these companies to make me a recommendation, but I got hints that they should be offered money or they were just reluctant to do so. The only reference they gave me was at Microsoft (Thanks to Sl.), but they never called me from there. I started to figure it out and found a service where for $50 you can get a practical reference to any big company, and then I generally found a way to do it for free – just anonymously ask for it in Blind, where there is a great community of people ready to help for free.

Voila – and in a week I get an interview with Amazon, Google, Facebook! Isn’t it a miracle?

In parallel, I agreed to an interview with everyone who called, for practice and experience, and, well, in case there was a special match with my Wishlist. And since, thanks to covid, it was possible to intervene online, this did not prevent me from working and preparing for the main events.

Of the interesting interviews I had in several banks. At City Bank, I was going to the position of senior vice president of digital lending development with a hundred engineers. During the interview, I was not asked ANY questions regarding my qualifications. They looked at my charisma, flexibility, and then verbally offered a good amount. Hell, if they select employees like that, then I’m sure there will be a lot of people there to deal with jokes and intrigues, but who will work, I thought, and refused to continue. In other banks and fintech startups, they started asking me in detail about specific algorithms, or the CEO interrupted everyone and started asking me about the details of Georgian cuisine. I think the reason I got this far in all of these interviews was because I didn’t take them seriously at first, and I wasn’t afraid to throw in a joke or ask a sharp question, and I was generally confident.

Another bank sent me an invitation for 4 interviews on the same day and one of the calls was at 8 am. I think it’s strange that without approval they sent me an invitation so early. An hour later, I receive a letter from the recruiter asking for a morning call – I answer that “everything is OK, I have already received the invitation”, but it turned out that he asks to reschedule this call even earlier – to 7 in the morning. I agreed and when I connected at 7 am, a bright yellow blonde in a business suit was waiting for me there. And this is in America at a distance! At that time, I already had a hundred interviews behind me, including Google, Fb, Amazon, and this was very different from the overall picture. What a signal she wanted to send me by scheduling an interview so early, in a suit at a distance, talking without a single smile. Perhaps in Europe or another country it could be normal, I myself love costumes, but definitely not in the USA. And yes, I didn’t pass the interview.

The first call with Google lasted 30 minutes, I talked about the current project and my experience. A day later, they sent me a letter with a notification that I had passed the screening with the recruiter and then I was waiting for an interview with a Googler working in the role that I applied for. It was as if a bucket of cold water had been poured on me – I realized that everything was serious now, I had a chance to get an interview with the best company in the world, which I had dreamed of since my student days, when I filed a whole search engine for the Georgian Internet and won with her university olympiad.

Two weeks later, I was scheduled for stage II at Google – 45-60 minutes with another TPM (Technical Program Manager) where the interviewer touches on all areas of the interview with a couple of questions (technical design, teamwork, leadership, etc.) If he finds a weak spot then that’s where it all ends.

I was lucky that I began to prepare a month before, immediately after my first call with Google, and therefore I had a total of several months to fully prepare. I think that other guys repeating my steps will be able to get similar results. What resources I used, I will later post on my instagram.

I also passed this stage thanks to 6 sessions with different coaches and a lot of material worked out, and now I was waiting for a full day of the so-called onsite interview – five hour interviews in a row. Previously, they were held at the company’s office, but due to the pandemic, everything moved online. A similar format is now used by almost all large technical corporations. Each interviewer has his own goal, for which he (a) is looking for signals in the answers. For example, the focus may be on defining your relationship with users, and you will be asked about how you lead a project or manage change, with the hope of hearing your approach to this in the answers.

3 out of 5 interviews were behavioral, where I was asked how I managed risks, resolved conflicts, gave the user more than they asked for, and when I made decisions without having enough data to do so.

Preparing for an interview, you need to understand what exactly your interviewers will try to hear in each session, and this, by the way, is not quite simple. In Amazon’s case, it’s a few specific principles from their 14 core leadership principles, but on Facebook, they don’t measure by their 5 principles. In the case of Google, I have adapted my answers by showing:

• Precedence of user interests
• The ability to enter and exit conflicts with an emphasis on the interest and health of employees.
• When I didn’t know what to demonstrate in response to a specific question, I reduced it to one of Amazon’s leadership principles, and while it didn’t always fit with the company’s culture, at least the answers had a strong logic. That is, the Amazonian principles have become such a basis for my interviewing strategy for all companies. Therefore, when aiming at FAANG, I advise you to start preparing with Amazon.

In short, my formula for success was

• Coaching! This is probably the most important of all points, it is unlikely that I would have succeeded without it. I have tried different coaches and here are a few that I think are the best. For each company, before the interview, I took several sessions with coaches who have worked for these companies for many years and participated in hundreds of interviews. They honed my stories for behavioral interviews for a specific company. Write, I can advise superstars for Google and Amazon.
• Systems design content – paid courses, YouTube videos, articles (3 months) I will post a specific list of resources on my instagram. [AG1]
• Training interviews with other applicants on the portals Igotanoffer.com, tryexponent.com. In total, I spent 20-30 sessions, in which we interned and gave feedback for an hour in turn.

Before the main day of the Google interview, I had a couple of weeks. I started the countdown. The focus of my whole life has become one – not to miss anything. I took a few days off and spent dozens of hours researching everything on the Internet that could help me, I read a few books, I studied and monitored chats and forums. Every day I had several interviews, whether they were training, with coaches or in real, but in secondary companies for me. A week later, I had a successful screening in FB and Amazon, and I also had to start preparing for their daily virtual-onsite interview.

If you don’t pass an interview with all these companies, then you can get to the next interview at best a year later, so I practically cut off communication not only with friends and acquaintances, but even with my son and mother, I left the house only for food and in the hall – to squeeze out horror and irritation.

I must pass! I must win!

The more I invested, the more important it became to me. I bought all the courses on interviewing PMs (see on my instagram) and honed my interview skills with people and just myself on paper. At some point, the interview with Google was postponed for a week and I remember how confusion visited me – there was more time than was originally planned. I stupidly did not know how to use it and what to study. For conceptual knowledge, this was not enough, but for patching holes too much. I started racing, am I wasting time correctly, or maybe I’m missing something ….

One evening, my girlfriend and I went out to dinner at a nearby bar and we struck up a conversation with a black, cheerful guy. At some point, he took out a business card and it turned out that he works at Google. When I told him about my case, he said – don’t be nervous now you are in good hands, you have a sponsor, call me tomorrow and we will discuss the next steps.

Miracle! Or is it some kind of sign? What is another sponsor?

When I wrote to him the next day, as you might expect, he sent me the standard recruitment information from Google and said that he would be happy to celebrate success with me (if successful), but now he can’t help. Such a gentleman, it’s still funny when I remember.

The interview was scheduled for Monday. The day before, it was a sunny March day, I decided to take a break – I walked around Brooklyn, ate ice cream, bought a couple of T-shirts. After lunch I returned home. It was starting to get dark, and there was a party going on in the bar by the house. As soon as I entered the entrance, a shootout began, where my neighbor was shot and someone was wounded. The shooters got into cars and the chase began.

That night I didn’t manage to rest and sleep, sirens and screams outside the windows, two noisy helicopters hung at a low altitude. At about three o’clock in the morning, I threw off my earplugs and trudged to the refrigerator to eat mint ice cream with a tablespoon. So much preparation and now everything can break down due to the fact that I just can’t sleep.

I stood in what my mother gave birth in the living room flooded with light from the next house in front of large windows and looked at the departing train, I understood that I had done my best, but this did not guarantee me good luck. Everything is the will of God, and tomorrow we must accept what will be, with gratitude, and move on. Whatever happened. And if I have to succeed, then I will not be prevented by any problems with the Internet, or fucking helicopters, or gaps in my training. And after many years, I fell on the wooden floor and prayed hard for a long time.

Thinking what else I could do, I wandered off to make myself a background for a virtual call, but in the morning I still passed out so I almost overslept the beginning.

A week of silence followed the interview. For every phone call and email, my heart began to flutter, but there was still no news, in the meantime, I was in full swing preparing for Amazon and Facebook. This time I was already not so nervous, because I knew what to expect.

These days I did a poll on Blind to find out how many attempts it took on average for participants to get into FAANG. It turned out that one third of the respondents got there already after 9attempts! In Google, 1 out of 200 applicants gets a full interview cycle, and 1 out of 5 passes this interview with a positive result.

With Facebook, my mistake was that I did not work with a coach specifically for Facebook, as I was told that Facebook is a simplified version of the Google interview, but this is not true at least for the TPM role, which, unlike Google, contains also features Product Owner. In a systems design session, I was asked to build a food delivery system. After defining the requirements, I began to paint a high-level architecture, and I was asked to describe how I would prioritize the requirements and what kind of UI the application would have. I quickly responded and started to continue talking about the technical components, but from the follow-up questions, I realized that the interviewer wanted more information about the product, which I was not quite ready to answer. As a result, I did not pass the interview, but the impressions from FB were very positive.

The Amazon interview was a little different. First, I was asked to write an essay on one of two standard topics. I chose the topic – “what is the most innovative thing I have done in my life.” I spent about 15 hours writing two drafts and reading all sorts of tips on how to do it right.

Interviews were chaotic, if on Google and Facebook I had 5-10 minutes between sessions for biological needs, then with Amazon the previous interviewer went beyond his hour and the next interviewer had to wait and listen to us. And so non-stop.

In a systems design session at Amazon, I was asked to build a security system for elevators in buildings. An interesting task, I have not seen such examples in the courses that I took. As a result, we had an hour-long discussion, in which I drew this diagram. The interviewer seemed to be very pleased.

An interesting insight that I made for myself was that it is better not to talk about agile or in general about a specific management methodology. It was evident that in all three companies adherence to some fixed methodology was seen more as a limitation than a plus. In banks, by the way, it was the opposite, there were questions about the knowledge of Scrum and SAFe.

It’s been 10 days since the Google interview, I felt like I was going crazy, I was demotivated to stay at my current job, and I couldn’t understand what Google’s long silence meant.

I was completely burned out, had lunch, and then could not remember if I ate at all, not to mention the fact that I absolutely did not remember what exactly I ate. On the emotional plane, I also became like a robot, and it was not easy to get out of this state.

In the afternoon I got a call from an unfamiliar number – a recruiter from Google called and slowly informed me that I had received positive reviews and she was preparing my case for the recruitment committee.

Hurray!!! I screamed and jumped around the apartment with happiness! I couldn’t believe I made it!

She asked me for a few contacts inside and outside of Google who to contact to get feedback on me, which should have solidified my case for the committee.

It was no less a miracle to find out that I also went to Amazon, but I was not going to work with them because there were many posts about their toxic culture and bad attitude towards employees. Amazon was important to me in order to have a competitive offer that would allow me to negotiate a better salary with Google.

I bought tickets to Mexico to relax and celebrate, and this could have been the point of my story, but it wasn’t. Three more interesting months of negotiations and additional interviews were waiting for me!

After the approval of the committee, I was assigned the fourth level. I did not quite understand what this meant and started the so-called team-matching calls. That is, after passing the interview, I got into the list of approximately 40 program managers who were interviewed, who met with different teams on Google, and if both parties liked each other, then the applicant was already made an official offer. Such is the Google Tinder, where some candidates could hang like that for up to a year.

The first two calls were with the hardware teams in the data center. It was a nightmare! The last thing I wanted to do in my life was to do this. And plus you had to move to rainy Seattle! At some point, I thought that it’s not so bad for me to work in the current company …

After a few calls, I did find an interesting team working in Silicon Valley. Hooray, there is a coincidence!

A recruiter called me and named the range that Google is willing to pay. Compensation there is determined by three components – a base salary with an annual bonus, company shares and a bonus when signing a contract. To be honest, the offer I was given was far from the numbers I was dreaming of at levels.fyi, and I turned to one of my coaches for advice. The coach advised me to apply to one company that (attention!) deals only with helping candidates in the FAANGMULA company with salary negotiations.

I left a request on the site and already in the morning of the next day I had a real “interrogation” to find out all the details of my relationship with Google and Amazon recruiters. Then they sent me four files with a description of the strategy and verbatim scripts of negotiations. After they called me and checked how I learned them and even helped to correct the speed of phrases and focus.

Small fragment of scripts:

Although Google is known for being very reluctant to revise the assigned levels, thanks to this company I managed to do this. It saved me a couple of years of my career and allowed me to get a much higher salary. It is interesting that the head of the team with which we chose each other became my great lawyer. For her, this meant that if I passed the 5th level, I would no longer be able to work with her, since her role was only for the 4th level. Thank her very much for this! It was unexpected and confirmed my positive expectations of Google culture.

It took two more interviews, but it wasn’t that difficult, the conversation was free-flowing, where I talked about my previous projects. No complex behavioral or technical issues.

Then new team-matching calls started. There were fewer interested teams, and then I didn’t like them, then I didn’t like them. A month has passed. There are no matches with the teams and no new calls either. Will they still AT ALL??

When will this all end?!

Whistling in ears again. I started to get nervous.

Days have passed, several teams have appeared. One in New York and one in Mountain View California, both liked me. The choice is not easy.

On the one hand, I have already settled down in NY, and I like it, on the other hand, this is a chance to live in Silicon Valley and, it seems, this is the best place for a career. When if not now!? Moreover, the team from the Valley was undergoing a transformation, in which I usually feel comfortable, and in general they were engaged in game consoles, which, after fintech and government services with ironed collars, generally seemed like a fairy tale.