Google Interview

If you had coffee with the CEO, what would you talk to him about?

The current ecosystem, what he thinks of it, what his favorite Google product is and what changes he plans on making to Google internally and productwise for the next few years.

Tell me about a time when you improved a process at one of your previous workplaces.

We have a weekly call with the external Hulu team where we share updates on every campaign that's live. A majority of these updates are research sample numbers that got really time-consuming to read because the Hulu account grew a lot in the past two years. We now had more than 50 campaigns running at a time, so I decided to make our calls more productive and time-efficient by creating a template on Google Docs that lets both the Kantar and Hulu teams to fill out updates, with formulas included that shows the impressions tracked for each placement and the pacing of research sample coming in relative to the campaign end date.

Describe any innovative approaches you have developed to identify new opportunities.

When I worked at Enlightened Media which was a small start-up advertising agency as a Campaign Manager, a lot of our clients were local businesses like lawyers, electricians, and doctors. Most of our campaigns were Google AdWords and Display campaigns or Facebook display campaigns. I started trying out responsive ads for the search campaigns and doing A/B/split testing for Facebook campaigns (since they didn't have responsive ads until 2019) for our clients to see which ad copy worked best as an opportunity to change ad strategy in the future.

Which traits differentiate a manager vs a leader, and how do you rank yourself as a leader on each?

manager - oversees things and makes sure that things are running smoothly leader - takes initiative to promote growth and solve problems, and inspires innovative ways of thinking and doing htings

What kind of app/startup would you build right now given the state of the ecosystem?

something that helps businesses send personalized text messages to consumers

How do you think the digital advertising world will change in the next 3 years?

1) Less and less disruptive ads and an increase of ads that are highly personalized and relevant, where users can also engage with the ad 2) Programmatic buys within campaigns 3) CTV and voice search space will grow even more

Why Google? What is Google?

A company that is trying to make information more useful and accessible to everyone. I want to work for Google because I love all your products, at least the ones I've used, and I've used a lot of them. I am also interested in Google because I agree with all the values that the company stands for, including trying to improve the lives of as many people as you can. I also have several friends who work at Google that talk about how open and supportive the culture is there, and I would love to be a part of that and contribute to it.

Why are you interested in this role?

Aside from the fact that I am an avid user of a lot of Google products, I also think that this would be a great opportunity for me to combine my experiences with growing and managing different accounts and developing and maintaining relationships with clients while helping to grow their business with products that I truly believe in.

What is your take on advertising?

At this day and age, I think advertising is about being able to connect with consumers on a level that is not just on the surface. I think it's being able to give your brand a voice that users can relate to, but doing that at the most relevant place and time.

Tell me about a time you used data to convince your client of something.

For Irish Spring ads running on Hulu's platforms, whether it be Hulu Desktop, Hulu Mobile App, or Hulu CTV, we found through many studies that their general target of 18+ was not an efficient use of their delivered impressions because we saw that people over the ages of 59 didn't resonante well with ads running on Hulu, so we recommended that for future Irish Spring campaigns running that they target it to Males 18 - 54, and their campaigns with that target have performed much better in terms of increasing brand favorability and purchase intent.

What is your favorite Google product and how are you going to improve it?

Google Maps! I would add a feature where you can have a blurb of the neighborhood. I know when you search a neighborhood in Google Maps, it shows you an overview of bars, restaurants and parks in the area, but I think it would cool to have a summary of the neighborhood, especially in a place like New York City, where there are so many unique neighborhoods in all of the boroughs.

What has been one of your most challenging tasks at work?

Having to grow Enlightened Media and cold call businesses to tell them how we can help them.

Tell me about a time that you created a novel solution to solve a work-related problem.

I had a Verizon Media campaign where, for some reason, they were unable to implement more than two tags within their adserver, but they had multiple placements with multiple creatives running in the campaign across Desktop and Mobile App. I worked with the advertising operations team to create tags that would include macros that could capture the creative and placement ID for each placement in order to properly track all media.

How do you intend to sell Google products?

I think Google products speak for themselves in terms of efficiency and results. There's a reason why so many advertisers use Google and its because Google has the ability to reach a majority of users on the internet at the right place and right time. If I were trying to sell to a potential customer, I would recommend one of the many products that could help their business, depending on what their business objective is. For example, if they are trying to drive more users to a mobile app they just launched, I would suggest running a Google App campaign.

What do you know about this position?

I think essentially, from I've gathered, the account manager helps partners to use and understand Google products in the most relevant way possible to grow their business.

How would you increase customer service from 80 to 90% with no additional resources?

I think the most important thing is to be a good, active listener with your clients to really get a good understanding of what it is that they want or what the problem is they are trying to solve. Allocating more time towards that will not only allow you to make more relevant and actionable recommendations for their business, but also build and strengthen your relationship with that client.

Give me an example when you had to handle a large amount of data.

I was managing an State Farm Insurance campaign with OMD, an advertising agency that had digital media running only 54 publishers sites and apps as well as nondigital media running on radio and billboards, so it was also a cross-media study. I had to prioritize that campaign in terms of troubleshooting and optimizing to make sure there were no discrepancies with tracking the impressions and that all the data coming in through our panelists were clean. I also led weekly calls to give updates in terms of which websites were performing better overall, and would shift inventory to sites that were performing better.

Explain the internet to someone who has no idea what it is.

It's like a library with books on every single topic, but there are unlimited copies of each book, so 1000 people can check out the same book at the same time.

What is your biggest failure?

My biggest failure happened when I was in college. I was paying my own way through college and rent in New Orleans while I was at Tulane, so I was working two internships, waitressing at a local restaurant and taking classes at the same time. I was pretty burnt out and stretched myself too thin, and that resulted in me failing to meet a few deadlines at one of my internships and also poor grades in a few classes. But from that experience, I gained strong time management skills and now am able take on large workloads at a time.

What is your biggest success?

One of the things I'm most proud of is stepping up and out of my comfort zone to own projects and accounts of different sizes and varieties and being able to do that successfully so that I can keep growing and learning even more.

Google Advertising Solutions

Search, Display, Video, Apps, Shopping

Describe a specific problem you solved for an employer or a team. How did you approach the problem? What role did others play? What was the outcome?

● Examples from your past experience where you demonstrated behaviors and skills applicable to the role you're applying for. ● Who you involved and how you influenced them. ● Challenges you faced and how you dealt with them. I'm the lead account manager on the Buzzfeed account at Kantar. When I joined almost two years ago, they were using our self-serve product, called BLI Direct. With this product, they were in charge of making their own tracking tags for their ads, creating their own survey to collect data from people who saw or didn't see their ads, troubleshooting and optimizing on their own, and creating reports on their own based off of the dashboard. BLI Direct was a relatively new product, around 2 years old when Buzzfeed first started using it, and they were actually the only client using the product at that point, so a lot of it was trial and error. They were running into issues frequently on their end with the product, whether it be scripting issues or the survey not spawning correctly on their webpage. Because these issues happened so frequently and it was supposed to be a self-serve, hands-off product for us, I had to set up several calls with the research, ad operations and product teams on Kantar's end and the client service and ad operations teams on Buzzfeed's end to fully discuss how we should streamline the troubleshooting process moving forward to avoid repeating the same issues again. I also created a universal troubleshooting process for the BLI Direct product for more efficient use of both of our time moving forward as well.

Imagine you are working on Gmail and a competitor starts charging $5 monthly fee for their product. How would you assess this situation, and what recommendation would you make to your team?

● How this change impacts the market. ● Target users and the impact of fees on them and their behavior. ● Pros and cons of your recommendation. ● How you would assess if this was a sustainable model moving forward. I would first try to gather some research on other competitors to see if they have also started charging their users to use their products. The next thing I would do is compare their target users vs Gmail's target users and assess how our users would react to a fee, if they would be sensitive to this change or not. My recommendation would be to test out a Gmail premium option, for example, the Gmail app without ads with similar pricing and see how users react to it to see if it will be sustainable.

Imagine you are in charge of organizing the grand opening of a new Google office in Bangalore, India. What steps would you take to plan this event?

● The objective of the event, and measurement of success. ● Who will be invited to the event. ● Logistics around the event, set-up, location, timing. ● Stakeholders to involve in the process. I think it depends on what the objective of the event is. Let's say that the goal is to drive traffic to the event. If we were trying to get as many people into the store as possible, we would target a general audience of 18+ in the general area using digital channels and mass media channels such as print so newspapers and magazines and billboards. In terms of logistics, I would assume that the new Google office location would be somewhere in an area that is easily accessible by public transportation, similar to Chelsea in NYC. I would plan the grand opening to be on a Saturday afternoon, assuming that people in Bangalore have a Monday - Friday work schedule. The stakeholders aside from Google employees would be the local planners that helped out, building management, current clients and investors in the area to renew existing relationships.

Tell me about a time you failed to meet a deadline. What did you fail to do? What did you learn?

● The root cause. ● How you applied what you learned in future projects. Last year, a few Account Management team members left the company unexpectedly. I was onboarded onto their accounts and took over campaigns that ended up almost tripling my workload. Because I wasn't used to juggling that many projects, all with similar deadlines, I failed to meet a deadline for providing a discrepancy report to an agency for a State Farm campaign, which was a big campaign with ads running on over 50 publisher sites. Even though it was a stressful time, I was ultimately able to strengthen my time management and organizational skills and haven't failed to meet a deadline since then.

Describe two specific goals you set for yourself and how successful you were in meeting them. What factors led to your success?

● Your objectives—be clear on those up front. ● Reasons you chose those particular goals. ● Any measures you set up to track progress. ● Obstacles you overcome and things learned along the way. 1) Break out of what's listed in the job description and go above and beyond what is expected in terms of my responsibilities. 2) Learn about all of Kantar's products and offerings and keep updated on ongoing advertising trends or potential future trends to provide the best insights to our clients and internally as well. I took initiative on owning projects when no one else wanted them or were too busy to take them to learn more about different kinds of accounts and studies. For example, my team primarily works on publisher accounts, but I took ownership of a lot of agency accounts and custom brand studies. I also set aside time to meet with team members who worked on different products to learn about the different products Kantar offered so that I could better tailor recommendations to our clients during kick-off calls or during campaign optimizations.