STEP Towards Success
Hello readers! I am Kirti Goyal, an incoming Google STEP Intern 2022 and Sophomore at IIIT Lucknow. If you’re seeking advice on how to ace the STEP internship, you’ve come to the perfect spot. I have documented my whole experience in this blog. I hope you enjoy reading this article and get to learn something from it.
What is the STEP Internship offered by Google?
STEP refers to Google’s “Student Training and Engineering Program”, which is open to freshman and sophomore students. This is a 12-week long internship that allows you to work on a software project alongside other STEP interns and full-time Googlers, bridging the gap between academic knowledge and practical professional experience.
When does the application open and How can you apply for it?
Applications for STEP generally open around November. Google visits several campuses to hire STEP interns. They also open applications on their careers page so that anyone who is eligible and wants to can apply off-campus. If you’re applying off-campus, you should certainly consider seeking a referral from a Googler. With a referral, your application will gain priority in resume shortlisting. I also applied off-campus through a referral. It assisted me a lot in the process.
Selection Process:
1. Resume Shortlisting
It is the first step of the selection process. They judge your candidacy based on your resume. You can refer to the resume which got me into Google here.
✨Tips for a good resume
- Your resume should be clean, and you should try to keep it within 1 page.
- Consider using a latex template. I personally prefer Overleaf templates.
- Try to include your education, working experience if you have any achievements, technical skills, projects, any responsibilities, or your leadership experience.
- Try to avoid any grammatical mistakes.
- Try to review it with your friends or any seniors. It helps a lot in identifying minor errors and you get a third-person opinion.
2. Telephonic Screening round
This round is all about a pep talk with your recruiter on a phone call. It aims to check your candidacy concerning your technical skills. Here, they ask you theory questions based on data structure and algorithms. The call lasts roughly around 15–20 min.
✨Tips for preparation of telephonic screening round
- This round is purely based on data structures and algorithms so try to revise all the DSA concepts that you have learned.
- Try to focus more on the time and space complexities of all DSA.
- The questions asked here are relatively easy. Mainly they are based on sorting and searching techniques, some library functions which we generally use, etc …
3. Coding Interviews
This is the main part of the selection process. There are 2 coding interviews that last around 45–50 min. The first interview will be an eliminatory round. It means if you perform well in the first interview then and only then you will get the call for the second interview. They mainly ask 1–2 coding questions according to time which you have to solve and code on google docs. They will also talk about your resume and the projects that you mentioned so just go through your resume and projects before the interview.
✨Tips for Coding interviews:
- Questions are mostly medium to hard level Leetcode problems so solve as many good quality problems on the online platforms.
- In the interview, you have to code on a google doc which is different from the regular code editors as there is no indentation, code completion, syntax error, etc… So practice writing code on Google docs and make sure that you are comfortable using it.
- Communication is an important part of any interview so be able to communicate with the interviewer. “Think Loudly”, whatever you are thinking just speak it out. It helps the interviewer figure out your thought process and he can correct you if you are going in the wrong direction.
- Practice writing clean code with full indentation. Make sure to give meaningful variable names. All these small things can have a big impact on the interviewer.
- If you do not understand the question clearly or you think something is missing in the question then without any hesitation just ask the interviewer about it. Sometimes, they tend to hide some information to check your analytical skills. Go with your gut ;)
- Be smart. Even though you know the optimal solution-show them a brute force approach and then slowly reach the optimal solution. It shows that you are good at optimization and you can approach a problem from various angles.
- After each solution, explain to the interviewer what the time and space complexities of that solution are.
- Try to learn Tree, Graph, DP-based concepts, and their basic algorithms. From my experience, these are the most important topics in STEP interviews.
What’s next?
If the interviewer is satisfied with your performance, you will soon get an acceptance email. In case you get a rejection, do not get disheartened. The world is full of opportunities!
I consider myself to be an example that you don’t need prior coding background or a knack for programming. You can strive for excellence simply through your hard work and perseverance.
I hope this article helped you get an insight into the entire selection process. If you have any queries, you can reach out to me through my LinkedIn.
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