Status: B.Tech CS in Tier-1 College
Position: L3 at Google
Location: Bangalore
Date: July-August 2020
YoE: 1yr
Technical Interview 1: The interview was interactive and the question asked involved stack usage. Initially, I came up with sub-optimal solution quickly but when trying to figure out time and space complexity, there was miscommunication with the interviewer. This took away a lot of time and I could only come up with the idea of optimal solution and code the sub-optimal one. The interviewer was happy with the sub-optimal solution.
Technical Interview 2: The question asked mainly revolved around max heap and min heap usage. I quickly came up with 2-3 solutions, discussed time + space complexity and coded one of them. Interviewer pointed out a small mistake which I corrected and ran through an example. The interviewer seemed pretty chill.
Technical Interview 3: The question asked was initially simple and the follow-ups were tricky. It had nothing to do with any data structure, however, had to use analytical abilities to solve the problem. It basically involves what kind of optimizations to perform given memory constraints. The interviewer was not very friendly but was always responsive.
Behavioural Round 4: The interviewer was like college student with 1yr of experience. He asked general questions around "Googlyness" and "Leadership". More like -
- In case a team member is not happy with offsite, how do you convince them?
- In case there are reportees having issues, how would you resolve?
- In case of a blockage, how do you ask for help?
And a few more which I can't recollect. It was a peaceful interview.
Technical Round 5: This was the best interview I ever had. The interviewer was very friendly and interactive. The question involved finding a square in a given set of points. I quickly came with the solution and coded it. There was a follow-up question for which I proposed two methods and then we discussed which method is more suited in what kind of scenarios.
Personal Preparation: I solved around 200 questions across easy/medium/hard - distribution similar to gaussian. I think LeetCode is my personal favourite across all such platforms. I used to solve around 10 problems a week initially. Two weeks before the interview, I started proper preparation and solved around 5-6 problems per week day and 10-12 problems on Saturday and Sunday each. I think the important thing as everyone mentions is to Think Out Loud during interview, especially during virtual interviews.