Google Application Engineering Internship interview experience
Hey readers! I am Shreya Deep, a 4th-year undergraduate student pursuing my B.Tech in EE from Indian Institute of Technology, Indore. Currently, I am interning at Google as an Application Engineering intern.
Through this blog, I will be sharing everything regarding my internship at Google in detail. So without any further delay, let’s get started.
It is to be noted that the views represented in this blog are the personal views of the writer and neither of Google nor Codess.Cafe.
Before diving into the application process, let us first see what the AE role is.
Difference between the SWE and AE roles:
The AE role is a quite new role at Google. The difference between these roles is that in SWE, you basically work on the products of Google while in AE, you work on the internal tools of Google (also the third-party tools that are used in Google sometimes). In the AE role, you also talk to the business teams and get to know their requirements.
Application process:
So this was an on-campus opportunity for me. Therefore, I applied when the mail was circulated to us from our training and placement cell. All the EE and CSE students were eligible. There wasn’t any minimum CPI criteria mentioned. We just had to submit our resume to the google form circulated.
How did I prepare?
Being from a non-CS background, managing time was a major challenge for me. But I somehow managed to sail through.
The preparation was just like any other role at any other firm. Obviously, DSA is a must for roles like these, so I practiced DSA on platforms like Codeforces, Leetcode, and CodeChef.
I prepared all the DSA topics only by practicing problems and watching youtube tutorials. Some of the YouTube channels that I referred to are takeUforward, CodeNCode, and Nick White.
You can check out my coding profiles here: Codeforces, Leetcode, and Codechef.
Apart from DSA, there is another topic that is asked for this role, and that is System Design. I prepared for it from Gaurav Sen’s Youtube Channel, CodeKarle youtube channel, medium blogs, and interviewbit mostly.
Some of the important topics to focus on for the interviews are Graphs and DP. Also, it’s a must to learn CS topics like DBMS and OOPs. You can refer to Gate Smashers for these topics.
Recruiting process:
Round 1: Online coding challenge:
(24th July 2021) Platform- HackerEarth, Time- 1hr
This was an hour-long online round. The interview started directly with questions. I was asked 2 questions. I couldn't reveal the exact questions due to the NDA policy. However, based on leetcode difficulty I would rate one as medium-hard level and the other as hard level. Solutions involved topics like DP and Graphs. Partial points were given depending on the number of test cases passing. This round essentially tested your speed at problem-solving.
Round 2: Technical Interview
(9th Aug 2021) Platform- Google meet, Time- 55 minutes
Three questions were asked to me here. Once you’re done with one, then only they would move to the next. Generally, they were asking 2 questions to each candidate. If you still had time after solving 2, they would go for the third one.
Out of the three questions asked to me, 2 were of medium level and 1 was of easy. The first involved priority queue data structure, the second map+recursive, and the third one was some greedy algorithm. The interview generally lasts for 45 minutes, but since the interviewer already asked me the third question, we continued discussing the solution to that problem, and therefore it got extended by 10 minutes.
Round 3: System Design round
(12th Aug 2021) Platform- Google meet, Time- 50 minutes
This was a design round. At first, the interviewer asked me about my projects. (What features do they have, What kind of DBs were used, tech stacks, etc…) Then I was asked to design Splitwise.
For those who don’t know, Splitwise is an app for managing your expenses. It can be used to track your bills and other shared expenses.
I initially started with the overall high-level design. He mainly wanted to see if I can make appropriate databases with their attributes. Made me draw tables and ER diagrams. After that, I was asked to write 3 SQL queries on those databases for extracting some particular data. The queries mostly consisted of JOINS.
The interview ended with a small discussion on when colleges are going to reopen and how life has been in online semesters. The overall interview experience was great. The interviewer was very supportive and understanding.
Points to keep in mind while writing code in interviews:
Write your code in a professional manner. Your aim is to ensure that your interviewer understands your code so that they can quickly assess if it accomplishes what it’s supposed to and solves the problem.
Use descriptive variable names and avoid single-letter names unless they are used for iteration.
Use helper functions to put portions of the code together, especially if you plan on reusing them.
Use Comments. You don’t require extensive comments. You may use smaller comments (3–4 words long) in critical places.
Be careful with code structure and indentation!
Result time
On the next day, the final results were sent and I got to know that I was selected. I was very happy and excited about this new journey!
Areas to focus on/ some tips from my side:
- Practice as many questions as you can for DSA.
- Make sure to learn about OOPs and DBMS. If you get to know about any other topic that is being asked, make sure to learn that.
- Create an impactful resume. Don’t write irrelevant information. Show your expertise through your resume. Choose a professional format for the resume.
- Be calm and keep your communication fluent with the interviewers.
- Practice mock interviews for getting used to the interview environment on platforms like pramp.
This was all from my side. Thanks for reading till the end. I hope the blog was helpful. If it was, do hit the clap button below and follow Codess.Cafe for more such articles. In case of queries, feel free to reach out to me on my LinkedIn. Wishing you all the best for an amazing journey that awaits you! :) You’re gonna rock!
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