Google Interview Experiences

Google Interview Experiences | SET 1:  Shivam Bhalla

One fine day, a Google recruiter reached out to me on linked with an open vacancy for a Technical Specialist for Google Ads for Gurugram, India location. I was dumbstruck and couldn't really come to terms with the situation as this was something I have always dreamt of- GOOGLE.

A bit about my work history:

• I am into analytics consulting industry working with Tier-1 Product Based Company as a Consultant for 3 years.
• I am in a client-facing role. I help the client measure their business performance against Key performance indicators( KPIs) and enable them to make data-driven decisions.

Process:

Google has a very smooth process. You are assigned an HR buddy. It prepares you for the interview, quite literally. He took my mock interviews as well and provided me with documentation to prepare for technical interviews.

As per his feedback, I was fit for the job and could excel in the interview.

Number of Interviews:

There were 4 interviews.

And, Google has a very definite categorization of their interviews.

Round 1: Phone screening with the HR

Round 2 - RRK Tech + Googleyness

Round 3 - GCA + Leadership

Round 4 - GCA + RRK Non-Tech

Definitions:

General Cognitive Ability (GCA):​ They ask open-ended questions to learn how you approach and solve problems. And there’s no one right answer—your ability to explain your thought process and how you use data to inform decisions is what’s most important.

Leadership: Be prepared to discuss how you have used your communication and decision-making skills to mobilize others. This might be by stepping up to a leadership role at work or with an organization, or by helping a team succeed even when you weren’t officially the leader.

Role-related knowledge(RRK): ​They’re interested in how your individual strengths combine with your experience to drive impact. They don’t just look for how you can contribute today, but how you can grow into different roles—including ones that haven’t even been invented yet.

Googleyness: ​Share how you work individually and on a team, how you help others, how you navigate ambiguity, and how you push yourself to grow outside of your comfort zone.

Interview Rounds in details:

Each round was elimination. All rounds were VC.

Still, I went to Google office as you don't often get a chance to visit Google office.

Round 1: HR Screening: I didn't see technical questions coming my way by the HR. He asked me everything about SOAP and REST APIs, web technologies etc.)

Verdict: I was through this round.

Round 2: RRK Tech + Googleyness :

About the interview: It was taken by a Technical Specialist, based in Singapore, having 16 years of experience and management grad from IIM Kozhikode.

The interview went around databases, web technologies, solutions to a business problem, and my past experiences in dealing with the client in my current job.

Verdict: After 2 weeks, I got the results, and I was through this round.

Round 3:GCA + Leadership

About the Interviewer: He was a Platforms solutions consultant lead, had an experience of 20 years, was an ISB Hyderabad MBA, based in Singapore.

The interview was around troubleshooting, APIs, web technologies, more SQL queries, situational questions( if the client comes back with XXXX, how will you approach the problem?)

Verdict: I was selected and was an inch closer to my dream.

They quickly scheduled my last interview on the same day.

Round 4: GCA + RRK Non-Tech

About the interviewer: He was the country head for Google Platform solutions for India, NZ, AU and Singapore, had an experience of 22 years, was an INSEAD MBA and a very smart person. He was based out of Singapore

This interview was mainly around behavioural questions, non-tech situational questions, product management scenarios. He was a chilled out guy and nice to talk to. It was a pure management interview.

Verdict: I couldn't make it through this round. After much thought, they rejected me in the last round.

As part of the Google process, things are required to be kept under the wrap. Thus, I cannot share the interview questions, reason of rejection and other sensitive details.

Experience:

Although I could not make it, the experience was worth the time I spent in the process. My performance in Google interview was my best performance till now in my career. I think my best was not enough for Google.

Google folks are highly experienced and smart people. They do not make you feel the pressure.

Though the results were not in my favour, I am satisfied that I met such amazing people and got through all, but last rounds.

Getting rejected has got its own feel when it is GOOGLE.

Google Interview Experiences | SET 2:  Ali Demir

I failed two Google interviews over the years. Then before the third one, I had a dream. I would have to pick between two jobs.

Next day at work the phone rang. Google recruiter asked if I would like to interview with Google. I said sure. A short conversation. I hang up the phone, turned to my coworker and told him “Google is going to offer me a job”. He said “OK, but you are not going anywhere”.

In our IBM office in South San Jose, I looked out the window and looked at the beautiful hills and wondered myself if I wanted to go anywhere.

Then the phone interview happened. I gave an answer. Did not give much thought to it. I don’t know if it was a good answer. Then they called for in-person interviews.

I got there on time, just before 10am. After a short, while I was standing in the meeting room, he was writing the interview question on the board. I recognized the question. It was something they asked me earlier, but I did not know the answer. I did not like the question, thus I did not even Google for it after the previous interview. I felt things did not add up. How could they offer me a job if I can’t answer this question? As I was hopelessly watching the question unfold on a whiteboard, he turned to me and he said: “If we ask you a question we have asked before, tell us and we will change it”. I told him I recognize this question and they have asked me before. He said OK, and he proceeded to ask another question.

If he did not point to it, I would think they are testing me with the exact same question and I would not have told that they have already asked it.

I gave an answer to his new question which came with a long discussion/thought process. I don’t know if it was the best answer. Never Googled the question later.

Then in the next round, a guy came and said: “What would you do if I told you I was completely unprepared”. I told him I can ask the questions and he can make a decision based on what I am talking about. He said “No no” and asked a question for which I did not know the answer. I Googled this question and it turns out a team of researchers wrote a paper about it. Unless I already know the answer, how the hell am I supposed to solve it standing in front of a whiteboard? I struggled without a clear algorithm, but a vague idea that could not be coded yet. My solution had many optimization ideas along with a discussion of low-level data locality, multi-threading options etc. But it was not quite what he wanted. Then he asked whether we can do what he wanted. I told him “yes, we can do”. My intuition told me it was doable. “But I could not do it yet”.

Then I had lunch with a Russian lady. She seemed happy in Google. Food was OK. To much dismay, I could not get tangible information about Russian TV channels that I hoped to sell over IP to the hotels in Turkey to help boost their Russian customer satisfaction.

Then I had two more rounds of interviews where I gave OK answers (I think). One was about coding and algorithms, the other one was about system design.

Eventually, they made a fine offer. IBM made a counter offer. I told Google what happened and told them I am too busy in IBM and I can’t come now, but could come in 6 months. They said they cannot keep the offer for long. I told them if they like we can redo the interviews next year. I filled out forms where they asked why I reject their offer. Had nothing to say other than it was bad timing and IBM counter offer.

A few months later I had a dream. I was walking on Google Campus’ pedestrian paths on a sunny day and I was working with a Chinese woman.

Then the phone rang and he said: “6 months has passed, do you want to come?”

Few months after I joined Google, a Chinese woman became my manager. I felt sunny days were ahead.

During the decision process a coworker from IBM who has joined Google earlier told me “Look, in Google my day is bad if the ice cream machine is broken, you have much bigger problems in IBM. You should join Google.” Now whenever I find the ice cream machine broken, I remember that he was right.

Google Interview Experiences | SET 3: Raman Grover

I got contacted via a recruiter based in Mountain View. This was my third interaction with Google. The first two were for internships during my graduate studies (2010 and 2013). I had secured internship offers at both instances (but ended up not joining). Google stores past interview scores and feedback. As such, my telephone rounds were waived and I was called for an on-site at one of the Mountain View offices.

I remember being stuck in traffic on the day of the interview and running 15 mins late. I called my recruiter and apologized for running late. To avoid getting stressed from traffic, I chose to play my fav music on the way, and it really helped :)

I had 5 rounds, first, second and fourth being coding and rest two system design. I really enjoyed each round as the questions were very well crafted, crisp and led to good discussions. One of the system design problems was very practical that has had many research papers published. The other was more on artificially expanding the scale to explore how a given system would behave, and methods to optimize performance.

As I ended the day, I felt relieved and satisfied for I knew I could not have done better. I felt that if I don’t get this one, then I really can’t do much beyond and that I might not be cut for Google’s expectations.

Two days passed and I got a call from my recruiter. She said we are beginning to find a team for you! it was a rewarding moment, a peaceful one and something to cherish.

Informed friends and family and treated me with a drink. Talked with 9 teams, and made a final choice to join the data infrastructure team in Google Ads.

Google Interview Experiences | SET 4: Robert Rossney

Pretty shitty.

I went through a phone interview and then five on-site interviews for one position, and then they said they’d wait and see. Three months went by. I interviewed two more times for a different position, and one of those interviews went really poorly, so they passed on me for a different position. Two more months went by. Then the first job opened up again, and they decided to pass on me for that. Then they changed their mind a week later and had me come in for another interview. Then they finally hired me the next week.

I am reasonably certain that I know why it took them so long to move on the first position: the manager that position reported to was an idiot.

Now, you will not often hear me say anything remotely like that about another Googler. That’s not out of some kind of Googler omerta. It’s just that in my entire time at this company I’ve never encountered anyone that I don’t think is at least as smart as I am. Except for this one guy.

He’s also, by an amazing coincidence, the only person I’ve worked with who abruptly “left the company to pursue other opportunities”. A lot of people at Google have impostor syndrome. This guy was an actual impostor.

What I believe happened is that his management knew he was a fool, but they couldn’t readily get rid of him for political reasons (he left the company days after the director above his manager did). They didn’t want to hire new people into his team unless they felt reasonably certain the new person would be able to function under a terrible manager. That was the tenor of my last interview, to be sure. I’ve read a lot of interview feedback at Google, and I’ve never seen any interview containing questions like the ones I was asked in my last one.

So that was pretty terrible. On the other hand, they hired me, and I’ve had a fairly successful career there.

Though I wonder how I would have handled my first year if that guy hadn’t been so quickly sent to a farm out in the country where he could play with all the other managers. I learned that before I joined he’d been informed that it was not okay to evaluate his reports based on the number of lines of code they were writing each month, which was news to him. I’m not making this up.

We’d have a weekly meeting of all the team leads in our org, and every time this guy would open his mouth to speak, something blatantly information-free would come out of it, just a stream of buzzwords like the ink cloud a squid leaves behind when it’s struggling to escape. The week this guy learned the word “cadence” we must have heard it fifty times. He once said, quite earnestly and in front of people who mattered, that, “The core competency of our team is dashboarding.” You just wanted to put tape over his mouth.

He made terrible decisions, too, and then blamed his reports for making them, which concerned me a lot until I realized that nobody who mattered was listening to anything he said. His emails were the sort of word salad that you associate with people in the terminal stage of syphilis. He was the kind of person who thinks he’s a nice guy inside, except that he also doesn’t really believe that other people are real. When he talked to you he’d always have a kind look on his face, but his eyes would be focused on a point six feet behind the back of your head even when he was looking you in the eye.

I have heard plenty of Googlers complaining about their management in my seven years there. But I’ve never heard anyone else complaining about management like this.