Google GHA (Hiring Assessment) Experience — Failed Today, Sharing What I Learned
Got my GHA result today and unfortunately, I failed.
Figured I’d share my experience because before taking it, I couldn't find a lot of information about what the actual assessment is like.
Last Friday, I received an email from Google saying I had 4 days to complete the assessment. I ended up taking it on Saturday.
Before taking it, I read this Medium article:
Honestly, after reading it, I felt like I had a decent idea of what to expect, so I decided to just take the test without doing any real preparation.
Big mistake, at least in hindsight.
The assessment is basically a work-style / behavioral assessment. There aren't coding questions or anything technical.
One part gives you 3 statements/options and you have to choose which one is "Most like me" and which one is "Least like me."
The thing I completely underestimated was that your answers seem to be connected.
You get similar/somewhat related questions later, so you need to remember what you selected earlier. I was treating every question independently and just choosing whatever felt right at that particular moment.
Looking back, I think that's where I messed up.
There was also another section where you rate statements from:
Strongly Disagree → Disagree → Neutral → Agree → Strongly Agree
Again, it's all about your working style — how you approach situations, teamwork, decision-making, etc.
Also, the article says it's a 30-minute assessment, but in my experience there wasn't a countdown/tight time constraint that I had to worry about. So don't feel like you have to rush through it.
If I could do it again, I'd definitely spend some time understanding how these assessments work and, more importantly, I'd pay much more attention to keeping my answers consistent throughout the test.
I obviously don't know the exact reason Google rejected me, so take this as my personal experience, not as a definitive explanation of how GHA scoring works.
For anyone who has the assessment coming up: don't make the same mistake I did and assume it's just a quick personality test that you can finish without thinking about it.
Read the Medium article above — it was actually very helpful in understanding what to expect.
And if anyone else has taken the GHA recently and has some insight into how these assessments are evaluated, I'd be interested to hear your experience.
Good luck to everyone taking it!