It was a University Graduate role.

I applied online and received an email to complete a coding survey. It wasn't too difficult, consisting of one LeetCode easy and one medium question.

After completing the challenge, I was emailed about a phone call scheduled for the following week.

The interviewer was 10 minutes late and asked me two coding questions.

After another week, I was scheduled for an onsite interview in Mountain View, California.

The recruiter was amazing throughout the process, and I also had a practice session with a Senior engineer before the onsite.

The onsite interview consisted of four rounds:

Round 1: A candidate arrived and spoke a bit about my resume, as they were slightly early. At exactly 10:15, they moved to the whiteboard and presented a question involving backtracking. I explained the brute force solution, and they asked me to improve upon it. I described how I could solve it with backtracking but was unable to code it completely. They took a picture of my whiteboard after time expired.

Round 2: I received a graph question. I used a LinkedHashMap to store the nodes I had visited. I completed the question, and my interviewer mentioned they were unfamiliar with LinkedHashMap. This made a slightly negative impression, but they were convinced. I ran through a test case, and the interview concluded.

I had lunch with an engineer working there. They showed me around the office and discussed the questions I had been asked.

Round 3: A candidate presented an object-oriented design question. They provided the specifications, and it became manageable once I understood the prompt.

Round 4: This interviewer asked me to design a logger system, which was the easiest of all. I had minor difficulty understanding their accent but managed. I completed this in under 30 minutes and answered a few follow-up questions.

Overall, it was an amazing experience, but I did not get the job.

The recruiter was very friendly, and the arrangements were superb.

Be quick. If an interviewer asks a second coding question, you are on the right track to get the job; speed is of the essence.

Google interviews are difficult, but there are more challenging companies to crack.

I hope this helps.

Backtracking problem.

Phone call - 2 problems on Trees

Object Oriented Design