Google is the promised land when it comes to career opportunities. Two million applicants want to get the foot in the door every year, a very small percentage of them actually lands a job at the tech giant.

With stiff competition like that, your skillset must really stand out. Knowing the skills that the company is looking for in applicants will be a great kick-off point if you want to join the workforces at Google. You can highlight them in your resume as well as let them shine during the interviews. Of course, you should remember checking off these points does not guarantee a job at Google, or any other software development company for that matter.

Googleyness

Googleyness is about fitting into the company culture. The best way to define it is as a set of qualities that will let a job seeker thrive at this company. Google is a place where people work together on problems that may have ambiguous solutions. This calls for qualities like open-mindedness, intellectual courage, enjoying work, and a great deal of self-discipline.

Part of identifying a candidate’s Googleyness is the often-asked question, “How easy are you to get along with?” Every interviewer, in turn, will be asked if they would be comfortable working and communicating with you every single day. With this in mind, you need to demonstrate that you value collaboration and work well in a team environment.

Being comfortable with ambiguity

At Google, employees need to be comfortable with managing ambiguous situations. The thing is that Google doesn’t know how their business will evolve, so they are expecting lots of ambiguous situations down the road. As such, an applicant should be comfortable dealing with situations in which there are no clear-cut pathways to solutions. A plus will be if you can provide evidence that you haven’t been afraid to take roads less traveled in the past, which will show that you are a courageous person and not afraid of a challenge.

Leadership

Google looks for people (no matter the position applied) with the ability to influence and inspire others to follow their ideas. According to Google, leadership is not about always being in the driver’s seat. It’s rather about being there when a problem comes up and stepping away when it’s been dealt with. In a nutshell, you need to feel when it’s appropriate to display leadership and when it’s not.

Problem-solving ability

The ability to do well in your role is something that goes without saying. What matters most is your problem-solving skills, because having them down means that you can deal with almost any situation. By asking you role-related questions, the interviewers want to see how good you are at solving problems. Creative thinking here is more favorable than providing the right answer. Google employees generally move from position to position, so having problem-solving skills is essential to succeed in any role.

Your tech skills are up to scratch 

Paysa, a popular job platform, discovered what skills a job seeker needs to have in order to get hired at top 10 IT companies, including Google. They have analyzed resumes of the users that work at Google, Apple, and Microsoft to see what they have in common. It turned out that there are 7 skills common across different positions such as software engineers, designers, data scientists and product managers. Here is the list of skills most in demand at these companies:

Designers

• UI design
• Graphic design
• Web design
• Photoshop
• Illustrator
• Information architecture
• Art direction

Software engineers

• С++, С and С#
• Java
• Principles of software engineering
• Python
• Javascript
• Agile methodologies
• SQL

Product managers

• Project manager
• Leadership
• Customer service
• Cloud computing
• Product marketing
• Strategy

Data scientists

• Project management
• SQL
• Machine learning
• Data analysis
• Python
• Data mining

Persistence and passion

The ability to progress despite the hardships is more important than having high intelligence alone. Qualities like decisiveness, seriousness and dedication to work have a direct impact on performance. How does Google identify whether a job seeker is really passionate about what he or she does or they have just memorized canned responses to this question? Google’s approach lies in asking candidates about what they do outside of work. Talking about hobbies reduces tension and lets interviewers get to know a candidate better.

When asking this question, they listen to hear how passionately candidates talk about their free time and personal pursuits. Do they prefer solo games over team sports? Other most frequently asked questions are like, “If I had a look at your Google search history, what would I see there?” “Is there anything that’s not on your resume?”

Smart creative

With Google, you don’t have to be a brainiac to get hired. Intelligence matters, but it’s not the key element. If you embody a quality which is described like “smart creative,” you will stand a good chance to land a job at Google. Smart creative is a simplified definition that unites technology-inclined mindset with endless ideas and ways to approach complex tasks. What qualities do you need to come off as smart creative?

First off, smart creative folks use analytics heavily to achieve desired results. In other words, they know how to translate raw data and into decisions that would bring the desired results. These decisions are usually hard to make and have multiple ways of dealing with. Smart creativity calls for analytical thinking and the ability to look at a problem at different angles. People who have smart creativity down always consider all sides of an argument and use the information they received to find answers and solutions others may have never think about.