it.interviews.txt

Hello! I just finished interviewing with Google and wanted to quickly catch you up on some interesting and frustrating steps of the process so that you can understand what to expect from Google interviews and the steps involved. I will also share some tips on how to prepare for the interview and mistakes to avoid.

If you’re looking for a success story, this is the wrong post for you. I actually failed the interviewing process, but the whole experience was pretty interesting for me and leads me on to another stage of my career. I will share more details on this at the end of the post. All names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of Google employees.

Initial screening interview

My story starts on a rainy October morning. I received a message from Olivia, a Google recruiter, with the subject «Interested in solving high-impact engineering problems at Google?». At that moment in time I had recently finished several projects and was looking for new challenges. Working at Google seemed like a good opportunity that I didn’t want to miss, so I quickly responded, «Yes, definitely» and booked an appointment via Google Hangouts.

Our chat took place two days later via Hangouts. Olivia told me how exciting it is to work at Google, and what the hiring process looks like. When I asked about the details of the position, she told me that they were looking for someone for their new office in Warsaw, Poland, to support and develop Google Cloud functions for enterprise customers. I asked about the exact responsibilities that would come under my remit, and the team I would be part of, but she said it didn’t matter at that stage – I could select the desired team and position later on when all steps of the interview process were completed. That was frustrating moment #1 for me, but I decided that it was worth persevering.

Frustrating moment #1. What if there was no team at Google that I would like to join?

From what Olivia told me, the interviewing process at Google comprises three stages: first of all, there are two remote coding interviews on algo and data structures. If you’re extraordinary, you might just have one interview, but for an average software engineer it will be two. The next stage is an on-site interview in one of the Google offices, which includes several coding interviews (again!), a system design interview, and last but not least, ‘Googleyness and Leadership’. The last one detects how well you’ll fit into the company.

Tip #1. The Google interviewing process is difficult and will take up several weeks of your life. You need to go all-in to prepare for it.