🚀 My Google Interview Experience 🚀

Recently, I had the incredible opportunity to interview for a Software Engineer role at Google India, Bangalore.

It all started with an email from a recruiter regarding an open role. Being someone who has always aspired to work at FAANG, I promptly responded with my updated CV and scheduled a quick call. The recruiter call, held over Google Meet, lasted about 20 minutes. After a brief introduction, they walked through my resume, discussing my full-time experience and frontend-heavy skill set. (P.S. – Be sure to clearly mention your exact years and months of experience!)

The recruiter then outlined the interview process and made it clear that all rounds would be DSA-focused, rather than domain-specific (frontend in my case). They initially offered me two weeks to prepare, but I requested three weeks since I needed to start from scratch, having primarily worked on frontend technologies.

🔥 My Prep Strategy
During these three weeks, I concentrated on:
✅ Graph algorithms
✅ Dynamic Programming (DP)
✅ Backtracking

I focused on these topics because I wasn’t very confident in them, and I knew they were crucial for the interview.

📞 Phone Screening Round
Yesterday, I gave my first phone screen interview. The problem I was asked to solve was similar to "Generate Parentheses" (🔗 https://leetcode.com/problems/generate-parentheses/description/ ), a backtracking problem. Luckily, I had practiced it before. However, lack of interview experience and confidence in backtracking led me to second-guess my approach, and I couldn’t complete the code within the given time.

📝 Important Note: The coding interview is not conducted on any IDE. Instead, Google has its own interview platform, which consists of just a blank page where we write code and describe our thought process while coding. There are no auto-suggestions, syntax highlighting, or debugging tools, so being comfortable coding in a plain text environment is crucial!

Now, it's a waiting game for feedback! 🤞

✨ Takeaways
🔹 Confidence matters! Even if you know the solution, doubting yourself can slow you down.
🔹 Time management is key! Practicing under a timed environment is crucial.
🔹 Clear communication helps! Explaining your thought process can make a difference.
🔹 Get comfortable with a blank coding environment! Since Google's platform lacks IDE features, it's essential to practice coding in plain text.

Regardless of the outcome, this experience has been a great learning opportunity, and I’m excited to keep improving!