Comments on: Why “I’d just Google it” is not an acceptable interview answer

By: Hatim

Hatim — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 21:58:37 +0000

oh well, i am preety sure that when finding solutions for hard problems, even the M$ people use Google.

By: The Programmer’s Guide to Getting Hired: Cover Letters « Software++

The Programmer’s Guide to Getting Hired: Cover Letters « Software++ — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:03:34 +0000

[...] Why “I’d just Google it” is not an acceptable interview answer [...]

By: Link Love Time! | Kaeli's Space

Link Love Time! | Kaeli's Space — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 02:19:39 +0000

[...] Why “I’d just Google it” is not an acceptable interview answer – Anyone can use a search engine. It’s not a reason to hire you. [...]

By: jhon

jhon — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:58:20 +0000

Hi,
I had my interview with Google for associate product manager .. you can read the interview here

http://ferozeh.com/Interviews/Google/google.php

hope it is useful to others..

By: raveman

raveman — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:42:25 +0000

I worked in one company where we did nto have internet access, so “google it” might be offensive to those kind of people.

By: Darrell

Darrell — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:54:12 +0000

When I give tech interviews, I have two types of questions. One is the type that asks moderately specific questions that I think anybody should know who’s going to pursue a job with us (explain static vs dynamic typing). The other is a much harder question, but which requires logic and thought more than remembering a particular type of database normalization. The latter are far more important to me, and there’s really no way I’d accept Google for a substitute here since the whole idea is to exercise your own brain and see how creative you can be. The first would get some dings for a Google answer, but if you were really good at the second, you’d go a long ways towards dispelling any suspicions I might have had. On the other hand, if you profess to be the world’s preeminent expert on databases, then you ought to be able to answer some pretty pointed questions from your head.

By: Kamil Szot

Kamil Szot — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:44:45 +0000

Actually technical part of all job interviews should consist of programming tasks to perform. You should just leave interviewee with these tasks, notepad (or programming environment) for hour (or few) and google.

If they really can google the things they don’t know fast enough then why not.

Often by glancing over the content they produce you can easily tell if interviewee has some traces of independent thought (or any thought at all).

By: Ivan

Ivan — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:44:34 +0000

It’s probably not acceptable unless the question is “what do you do if you can’t figure out a problem.”

Some interviewers bog themselves down in platform technical minutiae that really aren’t relevant to being a good coder/engineer etc. To annoying interviews like that “I’d just Google it” is my way of saying “fu, this interview is stupid and I’ll just cross this place off the list after I walk out the door”.

By: The Software Comics Guy

The Software Comics Guy — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:20:54 +0000

Ugh, you have no idea how many times a person I interviewed said “Yeah, I’d just Google it”… you’re really missing the point of the interview if you’re giving that answer. Giving an answer as Mark suggested (“I don’t know, but I can give you an answer tomorrow”) is much better – shows that the candidate is sincere, and willing to give it a shot.

By: garry

garry — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:15:59 +0000

I think Adam meant interviewee