I was contacted by a recruiter who set up a one-on-one phone interview with me and a Google engineer. The phone interview was not too difficult; it was a 45-minute interview with one to two technical questions of LeetCode Medium difficulty.

Afterwards, Google expressed an interest in flying me out to Seattle for a full day of onsite interviews. I had five one-hour technical interviews and one lunch interview. (The lunch interview is informal and does not count towards your actual interview score. It's a time to eat with a current Google employee and ask them questions.)

For the technical interviews, each interviewer brings their "favorite question to ask." For the most part, these are not questions you can really find on LeetCode. Difficulty-wise, I would say they all lie on the Medium-Hard difficulty spectrum.

Google gives you the option to type your solutions on a Chromebook or use the whiteboard. Most interviewers start off with a question that has an easily identifiable brute-force strategy and then a follow-up to that question. They want to see that you can come up with a solution in the first place, identify its weak points, and then improve it to arrive at a more optimal solution.

Afterwards, my packet went to the Hiring Committee the following week. I was unable to pass this stage.

Overall, although Google takes its sweet time with the interview process, my recruiters always made it a point to call me regarding any updates and were very responsive with any questions sent through email, which I greatly appreciated.

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