Leveraging ChatGPT for a Successful GCA Interview at Google

 Are you preparing for the most infamous Google interview, the GCA interview—and feeling stressed about how to prepare? Take a deep breath and get ready because what I am about to share are specific tips to help you get through this tough interview. And in the blog post I will focus on how to leverage ChatGPT to crush this tough interview.

Understanding the Google GCA Interview

The General Cognitive Ability (GCA) interview can appear insurmountable, most notably with the random hypothetical questions. Typically, these interviews will include 3 questions, the random hypothetical question, a role-related hypothetical question, and a broader behavioral question. The hypothetical questions will have multiple follow up questions that may all be asked in the beginning or may be asked after you answer. The behavioral question will also have follow up questions, for example: what would you have done differently. But keep in mind this casting a wide net, any type of question can be asked, so be ready for anything.

The primary focus of this interview is to test a candidate’s ability to problem solve and stay structured and organized while doing it. And in this blog post, we will talk about the power of utilizing ChatGPT to crush this interview!

Step 1: Breaking Down Resume and Job Description

Start by pasting your resume and the job description of your preferred role into ChatGPT and ask the tool to identify what specific skills align between the two. You can ask for a specific number of skills, such as five or ten, but ultimately your goal is to determine how your skills align with the role. This will ensure that you are aligned with the role's requirements and your competencies.

Step 2: Preparing for Hypothetical Job Interview Questions

One of the trickiest parts of preparing for any hypothetical question is trying to figure out what you will be asked in the interview. Take the following two steps. First, ask ChatGPT to create 10 hypothetical questions based on the job description. Next ask ChatGPT to create 10 random hypothetical questions that could be about anything!

Step 3: Identifying Your “Go To” Clarifying Questions

After reviewing the questions that ChatGPT created for you, start to think about the common ambiguities in both the questions and the typical types of questions you commonly ask in your current/former roles. For example, maybe you are always thinking about the size of client you will be working with or the timeline to get things done. So a couple of your “go to” clarifying questions might be:

• Is this client an SMB or enterprise client?
• What is the timeline to complete this initiative, one month, three months, or more than six months?

Try to identify a minimum of five “go to” clarifying questions.

Step 4: Crafting Your “Go To” Frameworks

Similar to building your clarifying questions, after reviewing the questions that ChatGPT created for you, start to think about the common concepts you will need to focus on, to tackle any situation you might encounter on the job. For additional context, simply think about it like an outline. If you could only focus on a handful of concepts to solve a question, what would they be? For example, maybe you are always thinking about the goals and objectives, the data, resources, risks, and the critical stakeholders. So maybe this is your first “go to” framework:

• Goals & Objectives
• Data
• Resources
• Risks
• Stakeholders

Try to create a minimum of three “go to” frameworks.

Step 5: Creating “Pre-Planned Assumptions”

Again, a similar strategy to the previous two, and “pre-planned assumptions” are an absolute game-changer for reducing stress in a GCA interview. Start to think about the common scenarios you will encounter in the position. And doing that exercise coupled with using the ChatGPT questions as ways to test your assumptions will be key. For example, maybe you are certain you will get a question about an upset client. So maybe this is your first “pre-planned assumption” is:

• I am going to assume the client (a brick and mortar and online retailer of flip flops) is having trouble utilizing Big Query because a few critical technical employees left the organization and we need to uncover their specific needs and conduct more GCP training sessions

Try to create a minimum of five “pre-planned assumptions,” and yes I want the assumptions to be this specific!

Step 6: Planning for a Behavioral Question

You might get a behavioral question in your GCA interview. Typically, these questions are more broad, specifically, you could get a question like: tell me about a time when you enhanced an already complex project? You will be able to utilize your best examples for the types of questions asked in this interview. Take the time to recognize areas for improvement, things you would have done differently, etc. You can utilize ChatGPT to both create practice behavioral job interview questions for you, but also you can use it to dissect your answers. Specifically, you can paste a typed up behavioral answer into ChatGPT and ask, do you think I missed any steps or anything you would recommend that I should have done differently, etc.

Sum Up

The GCA interview is scary, but by utilizing generative AI tools like ChatGPT, you can achieve great results. ChatGPT will absolutely reduce the amount of time you need to spend preparing and be more prepared than your competitors, good luck!

For more resources visit my website - Practice Interviews and check out our AI Practice Interview App.