YOE : 2 years , Location Bay Area

Applied June 2024

28th July : Received Online assessment.

8th Aug : Phone screen scheduled:

(30 mins, difficulty medium, interviewer was more interested in multiple apporaches and ways to solve the problem from a different approach, gave 2-3 related approaches with quick exploration)

Was ghosted after this for almost 2 months around mid October was asked to give availability for Virtual Onsite round

Oct 29th : Onsite scheduled.

Round 1 (Googlyness) : Standard behavioral questions, interviewer was very friendly has a good conversation.

Round 2,3,4 Coding

Round 2 : A hard question related to trees, Didn't understand question clearly as just two lines of description was given, gave intital approach interviewer quickly gave more detailed problem explanation. Quicjly realized my approach wouldn’t work for it, Changed my approach came with a new solution was able to code and explain it within 45 mins.

Round 3: A senior interviewer asked two question, first was medium straightforward question solved it in 7-8 mins with code, second question was hard related to simplyfing mathematical expression, used stack and recursion, interviewer liked my approached, I offered further optimizations he was satisfied with the solution, had a little chat in the end about his role at google.

Round 4: Two question both were DP medium level, somewhat related was able to solve and explain my approaches.

Nov 10th : Received confirmation that they are moving forward with team matching,

Received two team match calls in the 3rd & 4th week of November.

They asked my preferences about the team, I guess both the hiring managers were interested.

Dec 1st Received confirmation from recruiter that they are extending the offer.

Overall it was a long journey, I knew that google's recruting takes time and in the end it was worth it.

Have been doing leetcode consistently for last 2.5 years solved around 1000 questions, my interview questions were not any direct questions I solved one leetcode. But because of consistent practice was able solve it in time during the interviwes.

My advise to folks, try solving problems everyday for a year and do mock interviews with friends, as solving qustion in interview is important but it also important to explain your approach to the interviewer and prove your approach works, especially when the interviewer is expecting a different approach.

I hope this helps.