Recently had my Google India interviews for new grad role.
I received a mail from a recruiter around June 2020 asking if I'd be interested in interviewing with them. Initially was asked if I would like to go directly to the onsites in the last week of September. Declined this as I wasn't very prepared. They said if I wanted to interview later, they'd have to have a phone screen as well. I didn't mind this I just wanted to be prepared through the whole process instead of rushing into it.
Had my phone interviews in October 2020. Scheduled onsites in the first week of February 2021.
Here's how it all went -
Telephonic Rounds
- Telephonic Round I :
It was a simple question which was overcomplicated in the language. Took me too long to understand but I ended up giving a sub-optimal solution.
The round went okay, wasn't very sure of what to expect. - Telephonic Round II :
A second round was scheduled and this time I had 2-3 questions related to each other on arrays. Overall the round went far better than the last one and I was feeling confident about this.
Received positive feedback from recruiter and was moved onto the onsites.
Onsites
- Onsite I :
Got 2 medium questions revolving around BFS and Dijikstra's. For the second question I was initially thinking DFS but my interviewer asked me to optimize the solution. Finally finished both of those questions and the codes. Had a little chat about further subtler optimizations if possible. Overall, this round went very well according to me. - Onsite II :
Got 1 hard question. Initially stated a few points but started drawing blanks in the middle so there was a gap in communication. Asked the interviewer for a hint or two and he pointed me in the right direction. It was related to topological sort and I finished coding it. I wasn't very sure of what I was doing but the interviewer seemed to be happy with my code. - Onsite III :
Probably the best round I had so far. I was asked 4 questions of easy/medium difficulty and coded all of them. The questions were related to stacks, sliding window, dp, topological sort/dfs. Felt really good after this round.
About half an hour later, received a call from my recruiter saying that I did very well on 2 rounds and okay in 1 round and that they were happy with my performance and wanted to schedule the remaining two rounds the very next day.
- Onsite IV :
This was the HR/Googleyness round. A lot of situational/leadership questions were asked. I believe it went well wasn't able to make out much from the Interviewer's tone. - Onsite V :
This was the final technical round, probably the worst onsite. I was asked 1 medium question. I said we could do a dfs and my interviewer asked me to go ahead and code it but I wasn't very convinced about the optimality of the solution. So I asked him if there was a better method possible and he asked me to store states in a dp. I started coding it but I wasn't very convinced with what I was doing and somehow the dp solution wasn't working well. So I suggested a BFS + dp(basically a dijikstra) solution and coded it. He didn't fully understand my approach even after explaining it to him numerous times and since we were almost done with the time, he said he'll read the code and evaluate it after the interview. I was very confident about the accuracy of my code, but I wasn't sure as to how this interview went. Also since they expect you to solve 2 medium questions in 45 minutes, I think that maybe it didn't go very well.
Received a call from the recruiter 2 hours later saying that overall feedback is positive and that they'd be sending my packet to the HC for approval. Does anyone know how long it takes to hear back from here?
Fingers crossed! 🤞
Update : The recruiter reached out after 10 days saying that I needed an additional round as the HC was a bit conflicted.
Additional Virtual Onsite I :
LC medium question slightly modified. I arrived at the solution pretty quickly and spent the rest of the time in implementation. Was a bit slow in coding so I wasn't sure about this round. Lost all hope after the interview.
A week after, received a confirmation from the recruiter saying that HC has approved my application and they are moving on to the team matching and offer review process. She said that I was overthinking about the last round and the interview went fairly well.
Received an offer, super elated! YAYYYYY :)