Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang talked about his company’s hiring process in a recent podcast interview. Huang said it is easy for candidates to research and successfully answer the company’s technical questions. But CEOs said they like to reference check the questions they ask candidates.
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If you’re interviewing with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, you can bet your references will get a call.
On a recent episode of the podcast “Tech Unheard,” the CEO of the $3.3 trillion semiconductor maker said the interview process itself is “not a great way” to determine whether a candidate is a good fit for the role. .
“Obviously, everyone can pretend they’re having a very constructive conversation,” Huang said. “You can learn a lot about how to conduct interviews just by watching YouTube.”
Huang said the company’s technical questions are often shared online, making it “difficult” to conduct truly rigorous interviews. To conduct an effective interview, Huang said he likes to ask “one deep question” and analyze how candidates judge it.
Another part of his recruiting method doesn’t involve the candidates themselves.
“I went back to the reference check and asked them the questions I had intended to ask the candidate,” Huang said. “Great moments can always be created, but it’s hard to escape from the past.”
From January 2023 to 2024, Nvidia will hire 29,000 people from about 26,100, with internal referrals accounting for more than 40% of new hires, according to the company’s corporate responsibility report.
Huang said much of NVIDIA’s hiring success comes from its “transparency” about the company’s vision and strategy, which is reflected throughout the hiring process.
Lindsey Duran, Nvidia’s vice president of recruiting, previously told Business Insider that job seekers can expect candid insight into “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of working at Nvidia. Speaking to BI in 2021, when the tech industry was growing rapidly, Duran said the company’s hiring process needed to “move at the speed of light” without “jeopardizing quality.”
Duran said getting a job at Nvidia isn’t just about a computer science degree. She emphasized the importance of project experience as well as leadership and communication skills that can be demonstrated during the interview.
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“You have to be passionate about technology and want to work on really complex problems,” she said. “We’re really into this project. It’s not about the title, it’s about the work.”
Nvidia is currently one of the most popular places to work in the tech industry amid the AI employment boom. Many of the biggest AI companies rely on Nvidia’s computer chips to develop and train large-scale language models.
The company’s stock has soared over the past two years, nearing record highs, as two of its customers took the first deliveries of NVIDIA’s long-awaited next-generation Blackwell chip systems. Nviida also participated in OpenAI’s recent $6.6 billion funding round.
The company’s market capitalization exceeds $3.3 trillion, second only to Apple, and many of NVIDIA’s employees are wealthy. The company also handed out “special Jensen grants” to employees earlier this year that increased their stock compensation by 25%, Business Insider first reported.
