A step towards STEP
Interview experience and guide for Google’s Student Training in Engineering Program
What is the STEP internship offered by Google?
STEP stands for Student Training in Engineering Program formerly known as Engineering Practicum, which is a 12-week internship for first and second-year undergraduate students with a passion for computer science. This internship program has a focus on providing development opportunities to students from groups historically underrepresented in tech, through technical training and professional development.
What is the application process like?
Phase 1 —
Resume Selection
The shortlisting for the interviews was based on our resume. I am not sure about the exact criteria for shortlisting. Many of you might not have done projects by that stage. Chill! It’s not a problem but make sure you maintain a decent CGPA or you can participate in CodeJam, Kickstart, and Google CodeJam. You can read about these on official google websites. You have to make a profile and participate in these competitions. Google skims through the profiles and contacts people for internships. You can also try to find a Googler or someone on an internship at Google to refer you.
Phase 2 —
Telephonic Interviews
There are two interviews of 45 minutes each — 15 minutes apart. Each interview has 1 or 2 questions. Generally, you are expected to code at least one of them properly on the shared google document. They might talk a little about your resume just to make you comfortable or if the interviewer is curious about them. Most probably you will get your results under 2 weeks after the interviews.
Some tips for the interview
YOUR APPROACH MATTERS ALOT- It is very important to have crystal clear knowledge about data structures and algorithms. To test your confidence, start coding on online platforms like GeeksforGeeks, HackerRank, LeetCode. By solving questions you will learn how to tackle a new question. And that’s the only thing by which the interviewer will judge you i.e by your approach.
COMMUNICATE -Whatever is going on in your head, convey it to the interviewer otherwise he will have no clue what you are thinking. If you’re going in the wrong direction, he will stop you right there. Thus, saving a lot of your precious time.
PRACTICE WRITING CODE ON GOOGLE DOC- It is different than a text editor. There’s no indentation, syntax highlight and auto-completion so it’s good to practice on Google doc and get familiar with it before you give the interview.
BE SMART- Even if you know the optimum solution to the problem. You can give them this approach first and then improvise your solution rather than directly jumping to the best solution. So that your interviewer will know you have strong basics as well you are good at optimizing the solution. You can use a whiteboard to make the interviewer understand better.
APPROPRIATE CONNECTIVITY-Make sure you have good internet and network where you plan to give the interview. Sometimes the interviewer might not be audible due to network issues. So make sure you can listen to what he/she saying.
NEVER HESITATE- Do not hesitate to ask for clarification if there was anything you did not understand about the question or if you feel there is some missing information in the questions. The interviewer wants to check how analytically you can solve the problem. The interviewer will definitely drop hints in between to help you reach the final solution if you are stuck.
MANAGE YOUR TIME- Interviewers ask questions on the resume. People waste their time in telling the answer and ends up having less time for technical question. But, if you are sure that they are going to ask you two questions, make sure any other discussion includes everything important but is to the point so that you can manage your time well.
What happens after the internship?
If you have completed the internship then you are eligible to apply for a Returning Internship (RI) as a Software Engineering Intern. This is based on the feedback of your hosts. No additional interviews are taken. This is based totally on mentor feedback and performance during the intern period.
Words of advice?
The most important thing is you must know the brute force approach along with its running time and space complexities. Each of your answers will lead to another question(for example if you tell the time complexity of an algorithm another question will be “How you calculated that?”). Keep calm so that you can think properly. There is no need to be tensed. The interviewers know that it’s your first interview and they are very friendly and want to try their best to make you comfortable.
As mentioned earlier I had two telephonic interviews covering Data Structures and Algorithms. For the coding questions, I was asked questions related to arrays and hashing.They dropped hints whenever required which guided me to the path to the right solution. I had to write the code in my strongest language in a Google Doc that was shared with my interviewers. They even helped me with coding.
Important topics that you MUST brush up before your interview are Hashing, Maximum sub-array, recursion , sort array by parity, two sum array. Practice questions on LeetCode and Hackerrank. These websites will help you pick up tricks on approaching the problems. The questions might not make the perfect sense at the first instant, henceforth, don’t hesitate to ask for more clarification. Start elaborating on your approach and as they say it “Think loudly”. Let them know why are you doing what you are doing. If you know the most optimal solution to a problem, don’t push it out in a jiffy. Build onto your solution rather than directly jumping to the best one. Your interviewer will hence know that you are strong with your basics equally as the optimization. At the end of the interview, the interviewer will ask you if you have any questions about the company or work environment. It’s always good to have some pre-prepared for each interview.Last, be confident and fluent; It shows your personality.
And finally, even if you don’t qualify for the interview, don’t lose hope. Analyze what went wrong and start preparing for the next one.
Cheers,
Shubhangi Soni
