My Google Interview Experience

Are you having a tough time with recruiting? I know it’s rough but I would love to share one of my interview experiences with you. Although I did not get an offer from Google I want to share my experience starting from the initial coding challenge screen to my “virtual” onsite interview.

In August 2019, I applied online to Google for the Software Engineering — New Grad position. In September, I received a coding challenge from them. From what I remember there were 2–3 coding questions with the language of your preference — I chose Python. They were medium level leetcode problems, in fact I had already practice one of them on leetcode several times.

I received a message from them a week later asking for a phone interview. Unfortunately this email went straight to my trash folder so I did not see it until two weeks later — make sure to check your trash folder and fix your email filters! In October, I had a phone interview. This interview was scheduled for the beginning of October but got delayed to the end due to my interviewer getting sick and PG&E power outages. In my phone interview, there were 2 coding questions that I had to type out answers to on a google doc while they watched me type. The questions were related to recursion and built off of each other. Once again, they let me code in the language of my choice. They were common easy to medium level leetcode questions. The interviewer was kind about giving me hints and reminding me to use test cases to check my answers.

I thought I had failed this interview because they called me a week later saying the new grad SWE position had been filled. I thought I would not hear back from them because my phone interview felt like a failure.

However, I received an email from them in February 2020 about an open SWE position they wanted to do an onsite interview for since I had already passed the phone interview. I was scheduled for an onsite interview in March but since covid19 and lockdowns began it became a “virtual onsite.”

The virtual onsite consisted of 5 google hangout interviews back to back with 5 different interviewers. All of these interviews were technical and each interview was 1 hour long. Gotta have that big brain energy! There was a 45 min lunch break after the first 2 interviews and the entire interview day ranged from 10am to 4pm. Each interviewer asked a different question and I had to type out each answer on a separate google doc that they each sent me in advance. The questions were medium to hard level leetcode questions that focused on these topics: DFS/BFS, Recursion/Dynamic Programming, Linked Lists, Graphs and Trees. I screwed up some runtime questions but be prepared to answer questions on how to increase runtime of your code and what that runtime will be.

Some interviewers will leave you time at the end (if you finish the problem with spare time) to discuss any questions you have such as projects, work culture…etc. This is a great time to get to know the people there!

Tips for the onsite:

• sit with a bottle of water so you can stay hydrated without getting up
• make sure to use the restroom before hand or during your lunch break so it doesn’t cut into interview time
• interviewers will suggest that you think your thoughts out loud and use the google doc instead of writing anything down on paper — if you need a pencil and paper to write out thoughts make sure the interviewer can see you writing or else they may think you are cheating
• sit in an area with a plain background that isn’t distracting
• if you don’t know how to approach the answer, keep asking questions for clarification and give your best approaches on potential approaches (even if you think they are incorrect)
• remember to talk through the problem!
• make sure to relax and breathe — follow up the interviewer with questions if you have time

I hope these tips help you for your interview process and give you insight on how the process works!