My Google Interview Experience, India 2021
I am glad to share that I interviewed with Google for their Software Engineer, University Graduate, 2021 Start Role , although I could make it only till the 4th interview round, I believe there’s a lot you can learn about Google’s off-campus interviews from my journey. This article includes description about each round of interview and the kind of questions you may expect in them. So, if you are about to appear or are preparing to appear for such role in future, give it a read !
The job role expectations
It is very important to understand the job role because it tells you about what the company is expecting from your candidacy. In my case, it was a start level role targeting the fresh University graduates therefore the interviews were completely focused on application of data structures, algorithms , basic concepts like time and space complexity , handling the edge cases and the right programming practice.
That said, it is essential for you to have some good projects and required skillsets as mentioned in the job description, in order to clear the resume screening. I will write a different post on it because it is the most crucial step in off-campus recruitments.
The hiring process
The entire process included -
- Resume screening
- Telephonic interview (1 or 2 depending on the recruiter/role/candidate’s performance)
- On-site interviews ( 4 Technical + 1 HR )
- Committee Review
Your recruiter will reach out to you via email as you clear the resume screening, will brief you about the process and send preparation tips and study material for reference( it includes links to Algorithm courses on Coursera , Udacity and MIT open courseware and topics that are commonly asked ). They are very friendly, so feel free to ask them your queries, if any.
Google believes in providing the candidate with clear instructions about the interviews so that he/she knows what to expect and gets a fair chance in giving the best shot. Amazing right ?
My experience
I applied via Google’s career portal by submitting my resume ( without any reference ) and received a mail from my recruiter about 2 months later, but I was in my hometown ( which has close to no internet access) at that time and saw her mails asking for a follow-up around twelve days later ! However I didn’t lose hope and mailed her about the scenario and she was nice enough to arrange my briefing session in a different slot. [ Remember, your recruiters are your friends and are really rooting for you! ]
I was asked to fill a Google form selecting the language I will code in and days on which I was available for the interview, then they choose one from my suggested dates for the telephonic interview.
Telephonic Interview : It was a 45 minutes round and the interviewer was from Switzerland (She was my doppelganger!! TMI sorry ). She started off by giving her introduction and asking mine. She asked me a basic question about one of my projects in my resume and went ahead with the programming problem, which was a medium level binary search problem deriving little concepts from operating system scheduling. I asked some clarifying questions then went ahead and gave the brute force code first and talked about its complexities and then came up with the optimised approach. She also asked me few question on Trees and C++ (which was the coding language of my choice). At the end, she gave me the opportunity to ask her if I have any questions, but I only thanked her for being patient with me because I was really nervous.
I was again enquired about my availability and given a date accordingly and all three of my on-site interviews happened on the same day.
On-site Interview 1 : All on-sites were 45 minute rounds organised virtually and the interviewers were from Google’s India office. He started right off with the problem after a warm greeting of course. It was a DP problem and I gave the recursive solution first which wasn’t right when I checked it with the larger example (as suggested by him) and so I made some corrections and then we talked about the complexities. I only had 2 minutes left but I asked him if I could code the optimised approach using memoization, he agreed and I finished the code within the time bound.
On-site Interview 2 : A basic introduction and then the problem! It was a graph traversal problem of Leetcode medium level which I solved without any help and talked about the complexity. He said he was happy with the code and came up with a follow up problem for which he wanted me to only discuss the strategy. I took some hints and came up with the optimal approach. He was very kind and asked me if I had any questions for him, I asked him about his interview experience as a student and the conversation flowed. This one was my best performance in all my interviews.
On-site Interview 3 : The interviewer started off with a basic string matching problem and kept on adding sub problems to it. I gave right answers to the first three problems and he asked me the time complexity for the third problem which I got right after some hint, and then if I can optimise my solution for the third problem, which I failed to do, although I was very close to it by the end. But we were running out of time so he suggested me to code the first solution, which I did within the time frame. There were two interviewers in this meet and only one of them interacted while the other was probably a senior engineer monitoring the process. This was my worst performance so far!
I was conveyed via email within a week that I have not qualified for the final technical interview. I was really sad about it because it was my only focus and I was thoroughly involved in it for past four months — day and night! But the good part is the consistency I gained in competitive programming and the experience. Also, as my friend said — “you interviewed for one of the best companies in the world and that’s nothing to be sad about”.
My key takeaways
- Do not hesitate to reach out to your recruiter.
- Listen to the problem well and ask clarifying questions before jumping right into the solution.
- Ideally, discuss different approaches and talk about complexities before solving the problem.
- Dry run through the problem before and after coding.
- Talk and code while practicing.
Do let me know if this helped you and also comment down if there’s any query that I can help you with. I wish you all the best !
You can apply for the role here -
