When Google called me….
The big hour (three-quarters of an hour, to be precise) was about to begin. I call up my dad.
Dad: Hey dear! How are you? What happened?
Me: My Google interview will begin at 3 o’clock. It is 2:20 already and I am least prepared.
Dad (motivating as ever): You never needed any preparation. Your eligibility for the interview is a reason enough to say that.
Me: Thanks, papa!
Dad: So, take a sip of water, take long breaths and calm yourself down. Anxiety is the biggest enemy of presence of mind. It nullifies all your hard work to zilch. All the best! You will rock it!
Me: Sure. Talk to you later.
Having followed the golden procedure heard on call, I was then in a “get-set position”. Made sure my laptop and phone were charged enough to survive the 45-minute-long interview, filled my water bottle up and found the headset.
*3 minutes to 3….*
Put on the headset; connected it with phone; opened the Google doc (the conversation was supposed to be on call and problem-solving/coding on a Google doc editable by me and my interviewer); fingers crossed (after all, this was my first technical interview!)
*2 minutes past 3 and no call yet….*
A swirling cloud of thoughts in my brain. “Is there an interview at all? Did they forget about it? Is my phone not reachable to them?….”
Then the phone rings and I am delighted to hear the introduction of my interviewer as he seemed to be a very sweet person (and later turned out the same, yeah!) I introduce myself in a nutshell, primarily because my heart was thumping and with every thump I sank more into oblivion about myself.
Interviewer: So I guess we should start with the questions now. Are you ready Yamini?
Me (taking a deep breath and gaining back sanity): Yes, I am.
He started with very basic questions and simple to crack too (for those who are interested to know the questions, please let me know personally). I answered a couple of them pretty spontaneously in the beginning and gained confidence. Then came the coding round.
The first coding challenge was indeed a challenge. I wrote a code, he reviewed it and offered a test case where my code would fail. I modified it and then a rare test case (ever unthought-of by me) which compels me to revise the code. With minor corrections, the code was accepted!
*Festivity in my heart*
I decide (among myself) that I will offer a more holistic approach to the next question/s. And I do. Not much of a fuss was created and a second successful submission there! Gala!
It was 3:45 by then.
Interviewer: OKAY Yamini! Nice talking to you. Anything you would like to ask me?
Me: Yes! Thanks! May I please know when the next round of interviews will be held?
Interviewer: Probably after 10–15 days. Is that all?
Me: Yes! Thank you so much for the amazing experience!
Interviewer: Good luck!
*We hang the call up*
P.S.:
This interview was held on the 8th of March, 2016. The results of this round are due. However irrespective of my selection for the next round, I shall always bear the following experiences and lessons in my mind:
1. Never be judgemental about anything. All my nervousness was instigated by the bigness of Google. Sans nervousness, I would have performed 1.5x (or maybe 2x) since the questions were far from unsolvable!
2. Start from the origin whenever you solve a problem(this applies to every other field around) and then try proliferating with your intellect into various cases. Since we are used to dealing with the most common(and worldly) cases of problem-solving, we acquire a tendency to neglect(and eventually forget) atypical cases that might occur.
3. Smile a lot, be cheerful with your interviewer. This depletes the communication gap and paves way for a bunch of hints (at no cost) whenever you are stuck.
