Google Interview Experience | New Grad 2021 (SDE)
Hiring Process
Google uses several steps to filter out the candidates. Each of the steps can be a terminating step, i.e., and if you don’t do well in any of the steps, they may not move forward with your candidature.
- Recruiter Screening
- Phone Screening
- On-site interviews (4 Coding Rounds, 1 Googleyness)
- Hiring Committee
- Team Matching
- Offer Extended
The whole process is long and tedious; for me, it took two months, but the hiring team helps you along the way with resources and process information.
Note: I cannot mention any specific questions as we were asked specifically by the recruitment team not to disclose them.
Contacting the Recruiter
Last year, I contacted one of the recruiters through LinkedIn and later via email about the possibility of a summer intern. Still, she told me that there are no openings, but I should keep her updated on any progress, be active in competitive programming, brush up my skill set, and gain more experience.
Later in July this year, I contacted her again to send my updated resume as I completed my summer internship at Amazon. She said that they would start hiring for the role soon and told me to book a slot in her calendar for a recruiter screening.
Recruiter Screening
So this is basically a small conversation with the recruiter, and she asked me some questions about what I have done till now and asked me some basic questions about Data Structures and Time Complexity (somewhat like MCQs), also she explained to me the process and what skills they are looking for in a candidate. Two days later, she scheduled a Phone Screening Round.
Phone Screening
My interviewer was a senior software developer from one of the core teams in the US. It was a 45-minute interview, and he asked me 2 questions and a follow-up on the second question. The questions were based on Dynamic Programming, Sliding Window, and general logic. In the discussion following the interview, he also told me about the environment and his experience at Google. About a week later, the recruiter told me that the response was positive and scheduled the on-site interviews.
Virtual On-site Interviews
These interviews were split into two days. The first day had three coding interviews and later had a Googliness Round and one Coding Round. One of my friends was turned down after the feedback on the first day of the onsite and did not go through to the second day. Although it may depend on the interviewer, the coding round was generally 45 minutes and had two questions with follow-ups, was over a meet call and pair programming IDE. In the time, you have to come up with a solution, explain it to the interviewer, and code it in your preferred language. All the interviewers were from India Office.
Day 1
- Coding Round 1: The problems were from Strings, Data Manipulation, Sorting, and Retrieval.
- Coding Round 2: The problems were from Binary Search, Math(Geometry), Disjoint Set Union. One of the problems was completely different, and I hadn’t seen any problem like that before. Both of them were pretty interesting problems nonetheless. The interviewer was pretty strict with the 45-minute time limit.
- Coding Round 3: There was only one problem during this round, but with several follow-ups. The problem included Topological sorting, Graphs, and Searching.
Day 2
- Googleyness Interview: We discussed my background, and she proceeded to ask me behavioral questions, mostly about how I will tackle a given situation. We also discussed the principles that they follow at Google.
- Coding Round 4: There was one easy logic problem and a problem around networks.
The general difficulty of the questions was medium-hard(Codeforces Div 2 C-D level). The problems were all new as Google blacklists a problem from their database if they think it has been leaked in public.
Hiring Committee
The recruiter collected the feedback from all the previous rounds, and she requested my transcripts, along with information about updates on my resume and some of my achievements. She created a packet with all this information and sent it to be reviewed by the hiring committee. Hiring committees at Google usually consist of four to five members who have had prior interview experience and understand the hiring attributes. Google doesn’t use a majority vote, but everyone has to agree for you to move forward. Here’s how they describe it:
Hiring decisions in Google’s hiring committees are usually made by consensus (not majority vote). Research shows that unanimity enhances decision quality, because discussions tend to be more thorough. Voting produces one of three possible outcomes: Hire, No Hire, Hold/More Information Needed. In the last case, the recruiter will take the committee’s feedback and gather more information (potentially scheduling additional interviews) so that at a future committee meeting they can reconsider with more data.
About a week later, the recruiter informed me that the HC discussion was positive, and they are working towards getting closure on your application.
Team Matching
Following the HC, the recruiter told me that she was putting me in team matching. I was in this phase for three weeks, and it was pretty nerve-wracking, as passing HC only means that you’re at a good enough level to be hired by Google, but it is of no use if you are not matched with any team. Also, some of the team matching stories on Leetcode and Quora didn’t help.
Offer Extended
After a long wait, my recruiter called and informed me that they are extending an offer. It was a pretty amazing feeling. Although it was a long, tedious process and required a lot of preparation, it was all worth it in the end. She shared the Compensation Breakdown with me, and I was given access to the Onboarding Dashboard, and the verification and onboarding process began.
In the next article, I am thinking of exploring how to prepare and your questions in general. So feel free to leave any questions you may have in the comments.
