When it comes to job interviews, we all want to give answers that make us stand out from the rest of the candidates. That means knowing how to answer each question, including the tricky ones designed to stump you.
But what if you don't know the answer to a question?
That's a problem Google CEO Sundar Pichai faced in 2004, when he first interviewed at the company for the VP of product management position. In a 2017 chat with students at his alma mater, Indian Institute of technology, Pichai shared details about his interview experience at one of the world's largest tech companies.
In the first few rounds, Pichai said the interviewers asked him what he thought of Gmail. There was just one problem: Google had just announced the email service that very same day, on April 1st. "I thought it was an April Fool's Day joke," Pichai said.
He responded by saying he couldn't answer the question because he hadn't been able to use the product. "It was only in the fourth interview when someone asked, 'Have you seen Gmail?' I said no. So he actually showed it to me. And then the fifth interviewer asked, 'What do you think of Gmail?' And I was able to start answering it then," Pichai said at the talk.
