In October 2013, I attended a conference in Baltimore and left my resume and contact information at Google's booth during a career fair.

I received an email in April 2014 from an HR representative who asked me for an informal interview or conversation over the phone. Since I was still pursuing my B.S., the interview process would consist of a technical interview over the phone and an onsite interview if I was successful in the first round. During my conversation with the HR representative, we reviewed my academic background and agreed on a date for the technical interview.

I had the technical interview on May 15, 2014. It consisted of two programming questions using bit manipulation. I got to choose the programming language, and I chose C since I had been working with it lately. However, I was fully aware that I was not knowledgeable enough with the language. Although I tried to prepare as best as I could, I knew my performance would be far from stellar.

I managed to give decent responses for the problems, although for the second question, I did not achieve a correct implementation. We were trying to use a Google Doc to write down the question and for me to code the answer. However, for some reason, the Google Doc was extremely slow and sometimes wouldn't update at all. I tried to code my answers in a simple text editor and then paste them into the Google Doc. In the end, the interviewer and I gave up, and I emailed my coding answers to my HR contact instead.

A week later, I received a call from the HR representative with feedback about the interview. Unfortunately, I did not make it to the second round. Overall, it was a good experience and my very first technical interview. It gave me more insight into what I need to focus on for future opportunities like these. It was a very good learning experience, and both my HR contact and interviewer were very nice, professional, and detail-oriented in their attention.

Find the majority element of an array.