Google visited our campus for a tech talk and a career panel. The staff were friendly, and I connected with an HR representative who kindly reviewed my resume and kept a copy for herself for future follow-ups. She contacted me several times afterward via email, sending interview tips and reminding me to apply through the online system. I did so but didn't receive a response from Google. I contacted her again, and she personally forwarded my resume to a recruiter – a very kind gesture.

The recruiter contacted me, and I was scheduled for two 45-minute phone interviews back-to-back. I was not happy with the first interview, as I found the interviewer very reluctant. He spoke monotonically, asking about some of the projects I had done, the most challenging one, and the lessons I had learned from it. It was quite stereotypical. He then asked if I was ready for some programming questions. He posed a rather interesting question that looked challenging at first glance but ultimately had a straightforward solution. On a Google Doc page, I coded the solution with a minor glitch that he pointed out – changing the value of a constant, which was not a big deal. We still had some time left, so he asked a design question that I know I didn't answer very impressively. Overall, the interview went okay, but the most annoying aspect was that he seemingly called my phone through his laptop and was typing on his keyboard the entire time. There was also quite loud background noise of people talking. I had earphones on, and the noise was really distracting. I didn't mention it, however, as I hadn't found him very friendly.

The second interview was much better. The interviewer was a manager (if I recall correctly) on the Android team. He had earned a PhD from UC Berkeley and was very nice and positive. He asked about my thesis topic not like an interrogation but as if he genuinely wanted to learn. I really liked his attitude and personality. For the technical part, he asked me to write a program to solve a rather challenging but classic problem found in many algorithm textbooks. I noted that I had seen this question before and then attempted to solve it. I first solved it recursively, and then he asked if I could improve the solution further. I explained that dynamic programming would be useful for such problems and then modified the code to implement it. He was very positive, acknowledging my progress. In the remaining time, he described what it's like to work at Google and shared a story about leaving grad school to join Google and then returning as a part-time student later, utilizing the extra 20% time Google allows employees for personal projects.

Three days later, the recruiter contacted me with a thank-you template and some unhelpful information stating that we couldn't match you with any of our teams. She also offered to help with any questions I might have. I replied asking if this decision was based on the interviewers' feedback or if I had passed the interviews but my background didn't align with any existing projects. She responded with another template email stating that they cannot disclose any details.

Signed NDA.