I applied through Google's site at the encouragement of a campus recruiter. From there, I had two screen-share coding interviews and was selected for an on-site interview. I received a ton of resources from my Google talent manager, who walked me through each step of the process. One resource I utilized was a mock practice interview with another engineer, which was very similar to the questions I received on-site.

My on-site interview began with checking in at a front desk, and then I was walked to a small conference room by the engineer who conducted my first interview. This was the first of four coding interview sessions, each of which lasted one hour. After the first two interviews, a lunch break was included where I got to chat with a senior Googler about their experiences. During this break, I no doubt provided them with behavioral insights that were otherwise not included in the coding interviews.

After lunch, I had two more technical interviews and was walked out by my last interviewer.

My talent manager let me know that my interviewers had compiled my "packet" and were handing it off to the hiring committee. She informed me that if it took longer to hear back, that generally indicated the hiring committee was spending time deciding the specifics around the offer they'd present; however, that's not how things went for me.

About two days after my packet went to the hiring committee, my talent manager called and let me know I had not been hired. She did provide some feedback, but it wasn't particularly specific.

I was treated with respect, and the interviewers were fabulous throughout the process. There's a reason Google's interview process is a model for other organizations, and I feel the interviewers got an accurate assessment of my capabilities as an engineer. I think it's a testament to Google's process that I was very disappointed to not be selected, but that I also felt I had been treated fairly.

It did take, like, three months, though.

I agreed not to disclose the specific questions I was asked, but they covered core data structures and algorithms and were moderately difficult.

Each question allowed the interviewers to expand the problem if the initial task had been completed (e.g., how would you run this algorithm utilizing multiple threads/machines?).

My problems covered:

• String parsing
• Online algorithms
• BFS/DFS
• Memoized search