Interviewing at Google: My Experience! 💻

Yashika Jotwani — Thu, 13 Oct 2022 17:13:28 +0000

Job Description

As per mentioned in the mail**

Role: Software Engineer | Type: Winter Internship - January 2023 | Duration: 6 months | Location: Hyderabad or Bangalore

1️⃣ How I got this opportunity?

I saw this opportunity opening on LinkedIn for 2023 graduates, I asked for a referral before applying, and fortunately got a referral. After like 20 days of applying, I got an email asking for confirmation so they could set up interviews with me.

2️⃣ Summary of the Interviews:

⭕ Round 1 (45 Mins):
This interview got rescheduled and it happened after my 2nd Interview.
The interview began with a brief introduction. The question was Leetcode Hard+ (DP On Trees). I took some time to understand the problem, and I started with the basic Brute Force, and the interviewer asked me to code that only. I did code the solution, but it was an exponential time complexity, and I informed the interviewer of the optimal solution but could not code it due to a lack of time (due to an internet issue, we wasted some time rejoining).

⭕ Round 2 (45 Mins):
It was a Graph Leetcode Medium (but with a heck of a lot of edge cases). I immediately came up with an algorithm, but as I began to explain it, I realized that it was not the correct approach. After realizing this, I correctly built the solution using the hints the interviewer provided (he was very helpful in pointing me toward the solution). I initially struggled, but I eventually wrote the code, and the interviewer was satisfied. After that, we spoke about a lot of edge cases, and I had a great time in this round. I must say, he was an amazing interviewer.

3️⃣ What Resources did I followed for my Preparation?

4️⃣ What Went Well :

I felt fairly confident going into both rounds (thanks to Mock Interviews).
I was able to take up hints.
I did took it as a discussion and explained everything outloud.
I asked sufficient questions where I thought to get clearer with the problem.
As the actual interviews take place on Google Docs (a bit different than the docs we use), I have practiced coding some amount of the questions on it.

5️⃣ What Didn't Go Well and Why:

I didn't do a good job of covering edge cases.
I believe my code might have been written lot better.
I should have looked at more Dynamic Programming problems (Dp on trees, 3D Dp etc).

6️⃣ Here are some pointers that were useful to me:

I've used LeetCode a lot before, so I didn't need to check into fundamental problems at the last minute.
I practised writing code using correct naming conventions and driver functions in Google Docs.
I did sufficient mock interviews.
I spoke with a few people who had previously done Google interviews.
I read numerous blogs.
I didn't complete questions for all DSA Topics, but I did complete one with Google Tagged Questions and Topics and concentrated on a specific group of resources.

7️⃣ These are some Google Code Review Guidelines:

The interactions of various pieces of your code should make sense.
You should write the code as per your discussion and what you intended.
You should pick good names for everything.
The code you write should be testable.
You should think of various test cases.
You should write comments in understandable English.

8️⃣ Result:

Rejected

9️⃣ How I felt?

It was a wonderful experience. The interviewers were friendly and made the entire process quite pleasant, and I learned what I needed to improve on.
Additionally, getting this interview chance is a big personal achievement for me. I will always be thankful to the individual who referred me and the others who helped me and took my mock interviews.

🔟 You can reach me at:

🌼 LinkedIn
🌼 GitHub
🌼 Twitter
🌼 Leetcode

DEV Community: Yashika Jotwani