What the interviewer wants

Remember, the title for Google Strategy questions is actually Strategic Insights. This means the interviewer is really looking for your insights (think key strengths & weaknesses of an idea). In short, do you understand why something is a good or bad idea given a company’s mission and capabilities? Can talk about user and technology trends to help explain why a product company should do something or not.

Good:

• Say Yes: When idea aligns with mission and capabilities. And is scalable.

• Say No: when only viable approach doesn’t align with mission or capabilities

• Say No: especially when not scalable opportunity

• Map out approach so interviewer can follow without sounding too frameworky

• Pros & Cons: Show you can talk about good and bad reasons

• Summarize: Even IF you were hard to follow, can you bring it home clearly

Bad Habits:

• Being afraid to say no

• Suggest a partial launch without explaining what that would look like (high-level)

• Rambling

• Structure hard to follow

• Too Frameworky

• Not including risks or trade-offs

• Not taking a moment to gather thoughts

Why Strategy + Analytics Go Well Together

Strategy and analytics questions go well together because it is natural to ask a follow on. so if X should do Y, how would you size the opportunity? or How would you measure success? Not only does it show that you are logical about assumptions, it is a sense check on whether or not your call is right. Particularly for the Should X do Y or Why did X do Y questions.

Fine Line | Strategy > Analytics

A natural extension of a strategy questions would be Yes, do X. Or, yes X opportunity exists if you take Y approach. So a natural follow-on could be a mini-design exploration. Example Probing question: What would the product or strategy look like in practice?

Practice Timing

You need to practice answering in 5 to 20 minutes. There are many reasons:

1. They may want to ask more than one strategy question

2. It is likely to spin into an analytics question

3. The quintessential question is: You have 5 mins with Sundar. What should Google do next? If you get that, the 5-minute limit is in the prompt. Now, they may spin it into a deeper question, but your first answer, the first impression you leave needs to be 5 mins.

4. But, even a 5-minute answer can be spun with probing questions to longer, so you need to be able to go a little deeper with your idea. So you need to practice both short and long answers.

5. If you get your analytics question first and you take too long, you might have cut yourself short for strategy so you can save yourself with a concise strong strategic answer.

6. For a Strategy + Analytics question, the strategy question is 75% vs 25% of weight when it comes to the final hiring committee decision.

General Structure for Session

1. Series of Standalone Prompts: Basic Why X? What do you think of X opportunity? What is total addressable market for X?

2. Combo Strategy + Estimation: Standalone + Metrics or Estimate TAM

3. Strategy Sandwich: Basic Prompts + Metrics or TAM + GTM Strategy: Naturally flowing questions off initial prompt with start with strategy, go to metrics and end with strategy.

As you can see from above, for the combo or sandwich approach, you need to be able to sense check your answer after your estimation of TAM or your listing on metrics. They may seem like different questions but they can very easily be connected.