Google Administrative Assistant interview questions

The process was arduous but the people involved were nice and accommodating. I wasn't interested in the role as much as working at Google, and thankfully I didn't get the job because I've since learned company hierarchy is very flat with little room for growth

I applied for an administrative position through the Google website and was contacted within a week by an HR representative who scheduled a phone interview. The phone interview was low stress and the woman who interviewed me was very friendly. It felt more informational than evaluative. She invited me to the Google campus to take the written test and suggested that I have a current employee endorse me if at all possible and to study up the logic section of the LSAT to prepare for the test. I took the test and it wasn't as difficult as the LSAT but there were two fairly involved logic problems and an essay question about what kind of employee appreciation event you would plan given a budget of X (I can't remember exactly but the budget was generous, like $20,000+ dollars for a relatively small team and having only worked for strapped-for-cash nonprofits, I was pretty baffled on what kind of party I could possible spend that much money on . . . ). After the test, I was able to find an acquaintance at Google who was willing to recommend me for the position. I then was brought in for an interview, only I ended up interviewing for an admin position with a different department than the one I had originally applied with, which was fine. At this point, I think almost two months might have passed since I had first applied for a job with Google. My interview was with two women: one was the woman who held the position I was interviewing for and the other was another admin who she worked closely with. The interview was pretty straightforward, no gotcha questions. They asked why I wanted to work for Google, my best and worst qualities, how I felt about working with techies, a time when I felt I had improved a process at a previous job, how I dealt with a difficult boss, how I would handle on the job conflict. The only difficult, unexpected question, although given the written test it shouldn't have come as such a surprise, was one where I had to talk through the strategy I would use to plan an event. I think that's where I completely lost the job. They did not end up inviting me back for a final interview, which would have been with the departmental manager. I believe I heard back in about a week. The HR woman I was working with offered to keep my resume on file. I never followed up and never heard back. Although I do think if I had followed up I might have stayed in the game longer as I had, up until that point, been pretty aggressively following up at every step of the process. In the end, it was a long hiring process and I was just looking at a low-level admin job I wasn't particularly excited about.