BY MIDHAT MERAJ (MAN/II)
The Career Center organized a Google Tech Talk on Wednesday, September 30 to inform students about the operations and goals of the world-famous organization, along with the career options there. The talk was conducted by Selim Önal, a Sabancı University graduate, who currently works at Google as a software engineer for the search engine team.
A brief introduction to Google’s mission and working principles was given, highlighting the firm’s main goal: organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful. This was followed by an outline of the company’s work environment and culture, and a short explanation of the speaker’s own tasks and assignments.
The latter half of the talk focused primarily on career options at Google, ranging from learning and internship opportunities for sophomores and juniors to interview and job prospects for graduating seniors. This was of particular interest for computer science and engineering students as well as students who have a keen interest and academic background in software and programming. The career options at Google for software engineers fall largely into three categories: software engineering, site reliability engineering and product management.
The students were also informed about the company’s selection process, which includes a phone interview, followed by an onsite meeting and last, a committee interview that usually takes place before the final offer. The speaker in addition listed the qualities and skills that are commonly sought in candidates. These include a clear and comprehensive knowledge of algorithms and coding as well as strong analytical, language and communication skills. The talk concluded with a question and answer session, as the students enthusiastically learned through their queries about both Google itself and the career and growth prospects it provides. For further information regarding jobs and internships, students are encouraged to visit google.com/jobs.