CEO Sundar Pichai recalls Google job interview, 'I thought Gmail was a joke'

For Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, getting a job at the company wan’t as easy as one would have thought.

Pichai, who joined Google in 2004, says he was interviewed on April Fools’ day. Google had just introduced its email service Gmail, and much like many people, he thought Gmail was a prank from the company.

At a fireside chat at his alma mater the Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur (IIT-K), Pichai recalled being asked about Gmail a couple of times.

"I hadn’t had a chance to use it (access to Gmail was invite-only at the time), I thought it was an April Fools' joke," he told the 3,500 students assembled

He remembers discarding the service as a spoof effort from the company for sometime, only to realise after watching grimy faces from interviewers that he may have been wrong.

"In the fourth interview, when somebody asked me, 'have you seen Gmail?' I said no, and then he showed it to me," Pichai remembers. "So in the fifth interview, I told them about what I think of Gmail, how to improve Gmail."

Pichai also recalls that he was among the first few people to have not being interviewed by Larry Page, the co-founder of Google. He says, "I still joke sometimes that I got a job because Larry didn’t interview me."