Google Data Scientist Interview Experience — My Strategy for Passing the Hiring Assessment Personality Test

As the first stage of the interview process, this one's pretty simple — but it would be a shame to get filtered out here. I looked through everything I could find online and combined it with my own experience to put together what I think is the most complete summary out there, to save everyone some time. Just read through this whole post and you should sail through it.

What's the Google Hiring Assessment actually like?

It's not a technical interview — no coding, no questions about your background. There's no interviewer and no camera, and you can exit partway through and come back in. It's mainly testing "behavioral tendencies + work style."

What are the two types of questions?

Statement + Likert questions — something like "I will choose to go against an ethical action if it benefits the company," where you pick from Strongly agree → Agree → Neutral → Disagree → Strongly disagree.

Situational questions — these are newer, not much has been shared about them online, and they're a bit trickier. You get a work scenario and have to pick the action you'd be MOST likely and LEAST likely to take. I've posted some real examples below.

How to pass it

The core idea is "extreme" + "consistent." Here's the approach:

Sort the questions into categories in your head — Ethics / Collaboration / Problem Solving / Decision Making / Work Structure. For each category, decide ahead of time where you're going to plant your flag (go extreme) and then stay completely consistent with it. For example, for the ethics category, just pretend you're a moral paragon and answer every ethics-related question from that persona. Some people online suggest writing every question down, but I don't think that's necessary, especially now that there are situational questions too — just remember your persona for each category and you won't slip up.

A couple of examples by category:

For statement-type questions, 99% of the time you should only pick Strongly agree or Strongly disagree (maybe 1-2 exceptions). On consistency: the same underlying question will get rephrased in different ways. For example: "I always follow ethical standards." → Strongly agree. Then later: "If violating ethics would help the company, I might do it." → if you also answer Strongly agree here, that's inconsistent — and it's a huge red flag. Some of them also play word games, so look up any word you're not sure about.

For situational questions, it's honestly more like a reading comprehension question. Same idea applies — as long as you actually understand what's being asked, answering with "extreme + consistent" works fine. These aren't easy to find online, so here are a few of the trickier ones I personally ran into.

Question 1: Sensitive data / using a personal device

Situation: You are under an urgent deadline to analyze data for a senior leader by tomorrow. This data includes sensitive employee information. Per company policy, sensitive data should only be accessed on company equipment. You are working after business hours, and unfortunately, the data analysis software on your work laptop is running into errors, and you are unable to fix it.

Which action would you be MOST likely to take in response?
Which action would you be LEAST likely to take in response?

• Email the data to your personal laptop to try to run the analysis there.
• Send the data to a coworker who does not normally have access to the data, to try the analysis.
• Explain to the senior leader that you will miss the deadline due to technical difficulties.
• Remove the confidential parts of the data to try running the analysis on your personal laptop.

Question 2: Inappropriate comment / workplace respect

Situation: You notice a new analyst on your team telling your coworker that they "don't look like someone who works in this industry." Your coworker seemed to laugh at the comment, but they tell you later that the comment made them feel uncomfortable. Company policy holds all employees accountable for ensuring a safe and respectful work environment.

Which action would you be MOST likely to take in response?
Which action would you be LEAST likely to take in response?

• Suggest your coworker speak to the new analyst about the comment.
• Talk to the person who made that comment about how the joke was inappropriate.
• Send out a general email to your team about respecting other coworkers.
• Give the coworker who received the comment advice on how to better fit into the workplace.

Question 3: Confidential report / non-company equipment

Situation: Your team has recently shared a confidential report with higher-level leaders that should not be shared on non-company equipment. While the main author of the report is out on vacation, one of the leaders asks an urgent follow-up question about the report. You send a text message to your coworker, but they do not remember the details of the report. Your coworker only has their personal laptop with them while on vacation.

Which action would you be MOST likely to take in response?
Which action would you be LEAST likely to take in response?

• Contact your coworker and read the report section to them.
• Ask the stakeholder if you can provide a response the following week.
• Email a copy of the report to your coworker's personal email account.
• Schedule a video conference with your coworker and share the report section on your screen.