I was approached by a Google recruiter on Linkedin for software developer opportunity. I was not in touch with my DS and Algorithms so asked 4 weeks of preparation before appearing for the telephonice. As I always had this in the back of my mind that Google interviews are designed to select the best so I started going for Hard leetcode questions.

I solved around 75 questions mostly hard and few mediums covering mostly DP, Graph and arrays. And then I took the telephonic.

Telephonic Round

Interviewer was very polite and after some introduction straight directly to the question. It was a variation of this problem https://leetcode.com/problems/validate-stack-sequences/. I was able to come up with n^2 approach and he asked me code it. While coding I suggested him that we can do better by using the property of stack. After discussing he asked me to code and then I don't know what happened I got totally blank and was unable to complete the code.

After few days got a call from the recruiter already knowing that what was the result. And she told me that everything was perfect apart from the coding part but since it was an essential requirement they won't be moving ahead.

Tips - Don't treat Google interview any different. It is a normal DS Algorithm interview and should be approached liked that. Also don't solve any questions on the day of the interview (I did and was not able to solve few so was already down on confidence when I gave the interview)