My Google SWE Intern Interview Experience – Didn’t Get In, But Gained A Lot 🚀

Recently, I had the opportunity to go through the interview process for a Software Engineering Internship at Google. Even though I didn’t make it in the end, I wanted to share my experience and learnings from the journey.

📄 Application I applied via [Google Careers / campus placement / referral], after tailoring my resume to highlight impactful projects, open-source work, and leadership roles.

🧪 Online Assessment The first step was a 90-minute online coding round on HackerRank:

• Problem 1: Array manipulation (Medium) – solved all test cases
• Problem 2: Graph traversal (Hard) – partially solved
• Problem 3: Advanced string parsing – attempted

I managed to solve 2/3 questions well and felt decent about the round.

📞 Interview Rounds

🧩 Technical Round 1: A variation of “Top K Frequent Elements” using heaps and maps.

Follow-up: Optimize for space and time, and discuss edge cases.

Overall, the interviewer was kind and gave subtle hints where needed.

🔧 Technical Round 2: Binary Tree level order traversal (BFS + twist).

Behavioral questions: team experiences, conflict resolution, etc.

I stumbled a bit with time complexity discussion, but learned a lot from the feedback.

❌ Verdict: Rejected A week later, I got the update that I wasn’t selected. Of course, it stung for a moment — but honestly, I’m grateful.

🌱 What I Learned:

• Clear communication and structured thinking matter more than just the final code.
• It’s okay to not know everything — how you approach a problem is often more important.
• Interviewing at a company like Google is itself a win — it's a signal you're doing something right.

A variation of “Top K Frequent Elements” using heaps and maps.