Google Interview Experience

Most of the people are STUCK with past experiences which makes it impossible for them to realize their “True Potential”.

We hold our negative experiences, Which holds us from the real possibilities of the present that could completely transform our lives. So, let got your Bad Experiences Take a leap of faith and TRY AGAIN.

After getting rejections from Adobe, American Express, I never stopped myself from preparing for big tech companies.

On the 20th of August, I was at a family function due to which I avoided checking mails. So, the next day, I checked my email received from Google Careers.

“Rahul has invited you to apply for a job at Google! Start the application process by viewing their invitation. By accepting their invitation, you’ll allow us to share high-level application status updates with this Googler…”

I belong to a Tier 3 college, and Google doesn’t visit my campus for placements. So, I had no other option, but to apply through the official career site of Google.

Google opens its applications for winter Intern. But before I applied they stopped accepting applications. Then I applied to the Software Engineer, University Graduate, 2022 Start Position. I was quite surprised before I asked for the referral Rahul (Friend/Mentor) sends me an invitation link to apply for google. Without this referral getting the initial call is often the most challenging part. But this referral saves me a lot of effort and drastically improves my chances of getting an interview call.

On the 28th of September, my phone buzzed with email notification. It was from a Google recruiter in that mail he Introduce himself and asked to share my updated resume. After applying through the referral it is not necessary that you will get a call from the recruiter. But my resume was quite strong and he mentioned that,

“Considering your projects and achievements on your profile, we would like to invite you to apply and interview with us for the Software Engineer position.”

I was thrilled! I send my updated resume on next day. After this mail, I received another mail in which he introduces another recruiter who is in the loop of the email. After this conversation, I got a mail to confirm my good time to introduce the next step. and she shared a google meet link regarding Google Interview Process & Next Steps.

I presumed that it is one-one meeting. But after entering into the meet. there are almost 20–30 students. Then recruiter explained the entire process, coding criteria, data structures & algorithms, communication, and many more.

After the meeting, the recruiter shared with me some notes, guidelines, and a bunch of study material also asked me for my availability for the Telephonic round in the week of 11th of October. But I select a week of 18th October so that I can prepare well.

My Preparation Strategy

During that time, I tried to give as many mock interviews as I could to the who had interviewed with google before. Along with that, I did the top 50 questions that were asked by google before. I used my friend's Leetcode premium Account to solve those problems. I watched some mock interviews, Live classes especially strive’s live Graph classes. These live classes and leetcode questions helped me a lot. All the questions I practiced on Google Docs, as the interviews were meant to be done using those. Code should be Bug-free, readable code with good variable names covering all edge cases and reviewed with test cases or a dry run. I revised all the data structures and algorithms, time complexities, and OOPs.

1. Telephonic Round

My telephonic round was scheduled for the 18th of November at 11 am. I was nervous as well as excited. The interview starts sharp at 11 am. The interview went for about 50 minutes. The interviewer started with the introduction and asked me to give mine. I introduced myself and then it started with a discussion on my previous internship and project which was mentioned on my resume. He asked me to open Google Docs which was shared by my recruiter and he pasted a question on the Google docs. I took 2–3 minutes to read the question and in between, I also asked him some clarification questions. So, he addressed me with an example and explains that example. I assumed some test cases simultaneously thinking for the solution loudly.

The question was based on the graphs. I was thinking in the direction of trees but the interviewer gave me a hint by giving me an example. Because of that, I was able to think in the direction of Graphs. Overall It took almost 20-25 minutes to come up with the solution. The solution is related to detecting the cycle in a graph. Then he asked how to cycle detection helps to solve this problem. I gave him mathematical explanations to prove that. He was quite happy with the explanation and asked to code. It takes almost 7–8 minutes to write clean and bug-free code. Then he asked me to dry run the code and we discussed some edges cases. At the end of the interview, I asked him a question based on the introduction he mentioned that he is working in the team of google maps. He talked to me about 3–4 minutes apart from the interview.

After the interview, at 11:55 am I turned off my laptop. I dashed straight to my bed and pretend to be dead 😅. I was really worried about the result because I was only able to solve one question.

Following the interview, I heard back a positive response from my Google Recruiter within 2 days after the interview. I was delighted to make it through the first hurdle. I was on the top of the moon when I heard that I had cleared the interview and will proceed to the next round also she shared some tips and scope of improvements.

I’ll take almost 1 month of preparation time for the further rounds so that I can overcome some of my weaknesses. Stay tuned with me for more interview experiences. I’ll share my interview experience with American Express, Atlassian, and Google(further rounds).

This is not one day or one month's preparation. I would only suggest only practice and practice will help you to succeed. I’ll soon share some of the resources and preparation strategies.

Thank you so much for the reading 🤗