1.

Tell unforgettable stories behind your

hobbies and interests
The people I hired or worked with at Google were proudly quirky. They had
interesting hobbies, depths of knowledge, and passions outside of their
jobs.

But they did more than just say “I like to garden” or “I love building
furniture.” Instead, they would introduce how they came to love or develop
interest in something through thoughtful and engaging ways.

For example, a candidate who was an avid rock climber talked about how
it’s a meaningful activity because her dad had always dreamed of climbing
Mount Everest, but never got the chance to — so now it’s one of her goals
in life.

Whatever your hobbies or interests are, tell a story or experience about it

that your interviewer won’t soon forget.

2. Talk about what you don’t know, but

are eager to learn
No one wants to hire a know-it-all.

One of the most common mistakes candidates make is overemphasizing all

the things they’re good at. To me, that’s a red flag that tells me they like to
stay in their lane and play it safe, rather than seek out new challenges and
experiences.

Talk about what areas you’re interested in improving, skills you want to
develop, and ambitious goals you want to take on one day.

3. Use teamwork words like ‘we’ and ‘my

team’
It’s easy to say that you work well with others. There’s no way for a hiring
manager to tell whether you really do have teamwork and collaboration
skills.
But when you say “I” too much, it immediately indicates that you can get
easily distracted with trying to keep score of your own wins and get
individual credit.

Highlighting team successes, and not just personal ones, is a far more
sophisticated and rare skill set. Make it a point to say “we accomplished
[X]” or “my team did a great job doing [X].”

4. Talk about ideas that didn’t work

Google is famous for being quick to scrap projects that don’t work early on.
We celebrated our failures because it was an opportunity to learn and be
better.

Instead of feeling discouraged, the best employees are energized and

motivated by their failures. So share examples of times when you’ve had to
pivot from a passion project and apply what you learned to a new one.

This will be seen as an asset, not a failure.

5. Go beyond the job description and

have a vision of the future
The last thing a manager wants to hear is a repeat of the job description
they wrote up.

I was three years into working at Google when I entered former CEO Eric
Schmidt’s office with the objective of taking the next step in my career. I
told him I was ready to be chief of staff. I put together a roadmap of what
the role could look like and how I could develop the skills to take the
company to the next level.

I’m not saying you should go into the interview pitching a completely
different job title. The point is to show that you have a vision of what your
role could look like in a year or two.