A Detailed Account of My Google Interview Experience

I have been working as a software engineer at Google for more than two years now. I get a lot of requests from aspirants to share my interview experience. Here is a list of the most frequently asked questions about my interview experience at Google and their answers in detail. I hope you enjoy!

How did I apply?

I did not.

Actually, I was preparing to head to the USA for my master's degree in computer science and was mostly engrossed in the application process. In the process, I kept my Linkedin profile up to date with all my experience at my previous company (Cimpress) and all my side projects or hackathon participations. Luckily, my profile caught the eye of a Google recruiter and they reached out to me, asking if I was interested in interviewing at Google.

How did I prepare?

I have been doing competitive programming right since my college days. Even after graduating and finding a job, I was regularly participating in the Leetcode daily coding challenges. So data structures and algorithms was not particularly difficult for me. All it took for me to clear the interviews was a thorough revision of standard interview concepts. For that I went through Google tagged questions on Leetcode premium for a couple of months.

How was the interview experience? What kind of questions were asked?

I went through 5 rounds of interviews, 4 of which were coding. Here is a detailed overview of each round and the type of question asked in each.

Phone screen (DSA, elimination)

The first round was a DSA round which was also an elimination round i.e. if the interview feedback would have been negative, I would be removed from the interview process.

The question asked was fairly straightforward, involving sorting and arrays. The follow up was a slightly complex version of the same question.

Once I cleared this round, I was invited to the onsite rounds. Candidates are allowed to attend all onsite rounds, and the results of the interviews are cumulative. Due to the global pandemic situation in 2022, all my onsite rounds were held over Google meet.

Googleyness round (behavioural)

In this round I was asked questions about my previous experience in the industry. Some examples of the questions are as follows:

• Tell me about your most valuable achievement

• Tell me about a time where you overcame a difficult situation at work

• Tell me about a time where you had to make significant changes to a project midway

Coding 1

Here I was given a question involving a big story related to deleting disks. However upon closer inspection the question boiled down to a simple topological sort implementation.

Coding 2

In this round, I was given a question on validating whether a string followed a certain pattern or not. The question boiled down to validating parentheses and some ad-hoc logic.

Coding 3

In this round, I was given a question about a matrix and whether or not a point in the matrix could be reached, given some constraints. I solved the problem using dynamic programming and memoization. The follow up had some more difficult constraints, which could be solved using a map.

Any tips for someone preparing for Google interviews or is in the process?

Let me list some general tips for interviewing, not specific to Google:

1. Keep practising DSA consistently, so that when the opportunity presents itself you do not find yourself under prepared. Even a question a day goes a long way.

2. Keep your social profiles up to date and optimized. They are the best way to get noticed by headhunters and recruiters. Not only Linkedin, leverage other up-and-coming networks such as Peerlist and Indeed as well.

3. Give lots of mock interviews. Solving a question by yourself is one thing and explaining your thought process to an interviewer is a completely different ballgame.

4. Do not lose hope. If someone told me in my college days I would be working at Google without a master’s degree (which is the popular choice of graduates from my college) I would have laughed at them.