Preparing for the Interviews
I am listing all of the resources that I found helpful for interview preparation, not just for Google but in general.
- Geeks for Geeks: GFG is one of the best places to practice because it includes articles along with questions and detailed answers with an explanation of the time and space complexities.
- LeetCode: This is my personal favorite as it includes company-specific questions that help a lot. Also, I personally find the quality as well as the number of questions pretty nice when compared to all the interview prep sites I have practiced on to date.
- Cracking the Coding Interview: Apart from the above two resources that majorly focus on coding, this book also gives a good guide on how to impress an interviewer, by constantly clarifying the questions and optimizing your solutions. An interview is not just about problem-solving, it is about how you approach the problem and solve it from scratch.
- Codeforces: CF contests help a lot in improving one’s algorithmic thinking, coding speed as well as accuracy which are the key ingredients for acing an interview.
Google SWE Intern Hiring Process
Resume Based Shortlist
I applied for an SWE Internship role at Google. The first round was a resume selection round. Most of the candidates are rejected in this round itself. So here are some tips to increase your chances of getting your resume shortlisted:
- Always use a single-page resume.
- Make sure it only contains information relevant to the role you are applying for.
- Use the standard order of Education, Work Experience, Projects, Competitive Programming Profiles, and Achievements.
- The data points on a particular topic should be sorted in chronological order for the recruiter to have a clear look at your growth.
- Avoid using paragraphs instead use bullets.
- Include links wherever necessary e.g your Competitive coding profiles, Github Repos, and any other relevant internship/project code links.
- Some well-formatted resumes: Link 1, Link 2, Link 3
Two Technical Rounds
There were two Data Structures and Algorithm based rounds. The rounds are of 45 minutes each(which is very strictly followed). They start with a general introduction that goes on for around 2–3 minutes and then DSA questions are asked.
Candidates are generally asked two medium or a single hard question in these rounds. The difficulty level of these questions is similar to that of Codeforces Div2B, Div2C.
The topics that I found Google majorly focuses on are:
- Graphs: Shortest Path, MST, Topological Sort, Eulerian paths, and circuits.
- Trees: DP on Trees, Combinatorics based questions, and Query problems on trees.
- Dynamic Programming and Graph mixed questions.
I was asked one question in each of the rounds and both were of difficulty level comparable to CF Div2C. The interviewers were very helpful and clarified all the doubts I had regarding the questions and even gave hints when I got stuck, which tremendously helped me in my 2nd round, where at first I couldn’t even comprehend what the question demanded.
Both of my rounds went good and I was hoping for something positive.
Some tips that can help people in similar tech rounds:
- Practice hard.
- Make sure you are loud and clear when you are thinking in your head about any solution. It will help the interviewer understand how you approach solving problems. Do not worry if the solution is wrong. Just talk it out and optimize it step by step.
- Ask questions to clarify the problem given, you don’t wish to waste even a minute solving a question that was never intended to be asked.
- Write a neat modular code following the best code practices, since companies also focus on code quality.
- Practice writing programs on Google Docs.
- After each round of interviews observe your mistakes or areas where you need to improve. Make sure not to repeat the same mistakes again in the next interviews. You may also ask for feedback after each interview and use it to improve yourself for the next interview.
- Make sure to get enough sleep and stay fresh before the interview.
Hiring Committee
At this stage, the recruiters will send applicants hiring packet(which includes the candidate’s resume, interview feedback, etc)to the hiring committee, which consists of several people, who discuss whether to recommend to hire the applicants. There are 3 possible outcomes: Hire, No Hire, or Extra Interviews(in case of not being able to make a decision based on currently available feedback or to get data about certain elements that have been missed out in the last 2 interviews). In August 2019, the recruiter finally announced that I passed the hiring committee review and have been offered the role. I was really happy and proud of myself that day, I re-read the mail an infinite number of times before going to sleep.
This was all about my interview process and how I went through it, I’m keeping it short, I will be sharing my journey about how I bagged a full-time offer after the internship in the next blog and also my experience with some other companies that I have interviewed with for internship and full-time positions.