A recruiter contacted me. He was extremely friendly and excited to help. He sent me interviewing tips and a cheat sheet of what to expect. I had three phone interviews and four one-on-one interviews (on-site).

All of the interviews were extremely well-prepared and stayed within or less than 45 minutes each. They seem very strict about interview duration. So, if I have one tip, it's to not talk too much and let the interviewer ask their questions so you have more time to solve the technical problems. In the end, that's what will matter.

I would study up on at least the following:

• BFS
• DFS
• Hashtables
• String Manipulation
• Trees

For my level (three years out of college), I did not find the algorithm questions to be too difficult. They are all answerable within 45 minutes. The key is to understand the problem and identify an efficient solution as fast as possible. The implementation is also very key. Knowing to use BFS isn't enough; you need to be able to implement it very fast too.

I cannot provide the exact questions because I respect Google's NDA. However, here are the kinds of questions I was asked. I think as long as you can comfortably and accurately answer these types of questions in 45 minutes, you will be fine (I usually get asked two algorithm questions in a 45-minute session).

Asked several questions about graph traversal, specifically Breadth-First Search (BFS) and Depth-First Search (DFS).

Asked a question about set theory, focusing on the ability to efficiently compute union, intersection, etc.

Asked several questions about analyzing strings, for example, finding the longest common suffix.

Asked questions on anagrams.