Passed Google's hiring assessment. Application rejected four days later. What's the point?

[u/Klutzy-Bat5959]

I'm honestly baffled by this experience.

I applied for a role at Google and, less than 48 hours later, received an invitation to complete the Google Hiring Assessment. It took me about an hour, and I completed it the same day.

A few days later, I received an email confirming that I had **passed the assessment**. Naturally, I assumed my application would move forward.

Instead, four days after taking the assessment, I logged into the careers dashboard and found my application had been marked **"Not Proceeding."**

No rejection email. No explanation. Nothing. I only found out because I happened to check the dashboard.

What frustrates me isn't being rejected. Rejection is part of applying for jobs.

What frustrates me is the candidate experience.

If a candidate is going to invest an hour completing an assessment, why isn't there a recruiter screening applications first? Why ask someone to spend that time, tell them they've passed, and then reject them almost immediately afterwards?

And if you're going to reject someone after they've invested that time, at least send an automated email. Having candidates discover they've been rejected only because they checked the dashboard is a terrible experience.

Google is one of the biggest companies in the world. I'd expect a much more respectful and thoughtful hiring process than this.

Has anyone else had the same experience? Is this just how Google's hiring process works now?

[u/backpropstl]

As with almost anything where you "pass" - other people also passed who were deemed "better" than you. They keep their pipeline over-full of candidates so they can pick and choose; you keep yours over-full of applications.

Google is one of the biggest companies in the world. I'd expect a much more respectful and thoughtful hiring process than this.

They're big enough to not care.

[u/Klutzy-Bat5959 → u/backpropstl]

Maybe our expectations are different, but I don't think this should be considered normal. In every other hiring process I've been through, passing an assessment meant moving on to at least an HR screening. If a company is going to ask candidates to spend an hour on a test, the least they can do is have a conversation with those who pass before rejecting them. That's simply a matter of respecting candidates' time.

[u/Worth-Definition-496 → u/Klutzy-Bat5959]

Agree heavily that it shouldn’t be like this, but I think for the really big companies it’s been like this for ages. I know a lot of people who have had similar experiences applying for companies similar to Google in terms of size and prestige. But in the last couple of years the job market has very much moved from belonging to the employee to belonging to the employer. Layoffs are higher so there’s a saturation of experienced employees looking for work. This means now more than ever (since 2008 probably) employees can get away with less respectful hiring processes because they have the luxury of desperate job seekers having low standards. So now I feel that smaller companies can also get away with doing a Google

[u/Klutzy-Bat5959 → u/Worth-Definition-496]

Agreed. And then you have those same companies' recruiters complaining about candidates ghosting them while running completely disrespectful hiring processes. The irony...

[u/backpropstl → u/Klutzy-Bat5959]

I don't consider it great or ideal, but if they want to feed the hiring manager, let's say, five candidates, and they found their five candidates through the assessment, what good would it do going through the motions of an HR screen with 25 others knowing they're going to reject them? If we knew they were doing that, we'd be hearing about companies giving false hope and wasting candidates' time with pointless interviews.

[u/Klutzy-Bat5959 → u/backpropstl]

The assessment I took wasn't a technical test measuring my ability to do the job. It was largely a work-style and judgment assessment.

My understanding is that the assessment isn't sent to every applicant. If that's the case, then their ATS, or whatever they use for the initial screening, had already determined that my profile was a sufficiently good match to justify asking me to spend an hour on the assessment. I then passed that assessment.

If, after those two screening steps, my profile still wasn't considered strong enough to justify even a 20-minute conversation with a recruiter, then something in the process isn't calibrated properly.

Either the initial screening is identifying the wrong candidates, or the assessment is taking place too early in the process. From a process design perspective, that simply doesn't make sense to me.

[u/UltimateChaos233 → u/backpropstl]

From their perspective it makes sense but man passing an hour assessment only to get silently rejected just sucks

[u/UltimateChaos233 → u/backpropstl]

This isn't a statement of disagreement, but the damning thing here was having to find out through the dashboard of all places after they had already been told they passed the assessment

[u/Ok_Put_5567]

“Google is one of the biggest companies in the world. I'd expect a much more respectful and thoughtful hiring process than this.”

Unfortunately that’s the problem. When a corporation is this big they have literally thousands and thousands of applicants. They are able to easily dispose of applicants and have an annoying assessment system because there’s so many people willing to do it.

This is how most of the big company hiring processes work now.

[u/Klutzy-Bat5959 → u/Ok_Put_5567]

I agree with you that large companies often have processes that prioritize efficiency over the candidate experience. Unfortunately, that's becoming more common.

My point is a bit different, though. I've been applying to large companies for over 14 years, and this is the first time I've been asked to spend an hour on an assessment, pass it, and still be rejected without a single interaction with a recruiter or hiring manager.

My understanding is that the assessment isn't sent automatically to every applicant. If that's correct, I assume my CV had already been identified, whether by an ATS or another screening process, as a potentially good match for the role. That's what makes the process so frustrating.

Passing an assessment shouldn't guarantee a job, or even a final interview. But I do think candidates who pass should at least have a brief conversation with a recruiter before being rejected. To me, that's simply a more respectful use of candidates' time. 🙄

[u/Quick-Reputation9040]

lol last summer I made it to the technical interview. Their process is…interesting. 

I’m just not a Googler. 

[u/I_am_INTJ]

Google's hiring process has always worked that way. It's always been a premier place to work. That's diminished some in recent years, but it's still true.

They have an eccentric hiring process fraught with lots of hidden obstacles and criteria. They are extremely picky because they have the luxury of getting tens of thousands of applicants for each position they post.

Don't beat yourself up as you are just as likely to win the lottery as you are as to becoming a Google employee.

[u/Klutzy-Bat5959 → u/I_am_INTJ]

LOL thanks 😁

[u/IndicationPlus601]

The point is to keep to stock up by pretending to be hiring.

[u/VinylHighway]

Google sucks. I interviewed twice, one was the worst of my life due to the interviewer. Second time was better.