I got a phone interview for a new grad position at Google. The recruiter emailed me to set up an interview. She asked me to choose a week and provide the best time for her to call during that week.

The interviewer was from Google, NY. He called on time and was friendly. He started by asking me about my previous projects and then, after about five minutes, he jumped into the questions.

He asked me to open Google Docs and then inquired which programming language I was comfortable with. As I was proficient in Java, I told him that. He then posed a question involving algorithms and gave me a problem to solve. It was a trick question, and I failed to recognize it, completely misunderstanding the problem.

I solved the question based on my understanding and wrote the Java code for my solution. He asked me to optimize it, which I did. Finally, I asked some general questions about his work and Google.

When the interview concluded, I felt good about my answers. However, later, while discussing it with a friend, it struck me that the answer was incredibly simple. I had overcomplicated it, and at that point, all my hopes diminished. A week later, I was informed that I was not a good enough fit.

Overall, I think it was a pretty good experience. I was nervous, as this was my first interview ever, and that may have been the reason I wasn't able to think straight.

Tell about the problems faced while doing projects in the past.