I interned at Google the summer before and loved the place. The team seemed to like me. I am graduating, so let's do interviews!

I contacted my intern recruiter asking for a full-time job opportunity, and s/he quickly referred me to the recruiter responsible for that. Since I was a former intern, my phone screen was waived (I had two 45-minute screens when applying for the internship), and my former intern host was asked to provide feedback. I was asked to do a job talk (as a PhD) followed by four rounds of interviews: two research and two engineering.

The job talk was 45 minutes followed by 15 minutes of questions. I was basically talking about what I did during my graduate school years, so it was quite pleasant, and I was excited to see people interested in my work. After that, it was a casual lunch with my intern host, so I devoted every minute to enjoying the food.

The two research interviews were conducted by people familiar with the field and posed challenging questions on overall understanding. I found it very exciting, as both of us would get involved in discussions about the state-of-the-art. A little coding and math detail were asked, but mainly about research ideas.

The two coding interviews were very standard. I did not get those very difficult questions like "implement Sudoku in 30 minutes" that someone allegedly encountered. The interviewer was constantly copying my whiteboard writings down, which created a little downtime. I asked the interviewer, and s/he said it was recently required and not to worry. I guess if this could have been disclosed by the recruiter earlier, it would have been better.

After the interviews, the recruiter followed up promptly with accurate estimates of when I would get updates. The hiring committee approved the application in a week, followed by the final offer a few days later.

Overall, it was a nice experience, and Google apparently provides great opportunities.

I've signed an NDA, so I can't share exact questions, but LeetCode would be very helpful for preparation.