While I agree that this is a risk, I sincerely don’t believe this happens often when interviewing at Google.

For one, employees are continuously reminded to avoid bias in anything that they do, from the way in which interviews are conducted to the design of products.

Googlers are reminded to avoid this on a nonstop basis through annual trainings or even artwork and signage throughout Google offices that target specific bias-awareness programs. In the restrooms, posters with detailed recommendations, often tailored towards engineering, make for an educational read while you’re doing your business. Screens at the cafeteria show prompts challenging you to rethink assumptions. Dedicated teams are involved in performing reviews of proposals and code solely from the perspective of inclusivity.

I’ve never seen anything regarding “desirable traits” as part of a job listing. Hiring managers provide a job description that is reviewed to avoid bias, and pass along specific requirements for education and professional experience to recruitment teams. Recruiters take a first pass at CVs for those, and I’m honestly not sure how some kind of personality trait could even be distilled from a CV. Once a candidate that fulfills the minimum requirements is matched, they are set up to discuss other requirements with the recruiter, like relocation and timelines. I don’t recall from my own experience ever being asked anything aside from these practicalities.

For interviewing specifically, there are multiple steps needed to qualify as an interviewer, each of which puts a heavy emphasis on avoiding bias. The interview question itself needs to be vetted by a dedicated team and interviewers usually select their questions from the pre-vetted ones. Prior to performing your first interview you need to be doubly shadowed with topics like avoiding bias in mind. When asked to perform an interview, the details about the role that the candidate is applying to are provided and the interviewer is required to review the CV themselves ahead of time. As evidence of this, you’ll see that the interviewer will often match items from the CV against the listing to give the candidate the opportunity to expand on it and offer more detailed insights.

Rating the interview is performed within explicit rubrics, each of which with detailed descriptions. There’s not an option to simply reject a candidate—interviewers need to select options from these rubrics and provide evidence. This is in part why you will see interviewers vigorously taking notes during an interview.

The first phone screen has more relaxed requirements as a general confirmation that the candidate exhibits the skill level expected at the listing’s minimum requirements.

There are at least four in person interviews that then follow, performed by different interviewers. These results are reviewed by a hiring committee who makes a final decision solely based on the evidence with no insights into the associated candidate.

I have personally never worked at a company that is so meticulous in avoiding confirmation bias. In one smaller company that I worked at, I was the only interviewer and the sole decision maker for a candidate. Honestly, I cannot envision how Google can do better than they currently are with hiring.

I believe that the frustrating thing about getting hired there is simply the high bar and disparity between the high supply of candidates and the relatively low offering of positions. When you’re prematurely rejected after submitting your CV or you’re rejected after interviewing, remind yourself that you aren’t necessarily unqualified or that the interview was unfair, but that many qualified candidates might have already applied, or the head count may have been removed, or an internal transfer took place or some other reason unrelated to your skillset.