I got in touch with Google through a campus recruiting event. I talked to the recruiter, and she told me to submit my application online.

A month or two later, I received an email stating that I had an interview! I was so excited.

I had two phone interviews, each scheduled for 45 minutes with a 15-minute break in between.

The first interviewer called me 15 minutes late, which was a little annoying. We didn't chit-chat and got straight to the problem, which was a board game scenario (I won't go into detail to avoid breaching my NDA). When my interviewer asked me the question, my mind went blank, and I had no immediate solution. I ended up talking my way through it. Overall, I felt I didn't do too well on this question and used almost all my remaining time to solve it.

The second interviewer called about 1-2 minutes after the first one ended. He briefly discussed his role and then we moved on to problem-solving. Again, to avoid breaching my NDA, I cannot disclose the specific question. I thought I solved this problem quite well, and it seemed my interviewer was satisfied with my approach. We then discussed another problem, and instead of coding it, he asked me to describe my solution. After I did this, I asked him some questions about his experience and working at Google. We then concluded the interview about 5 minutes early as we were mostly done.

It took Google about 3 weeks to get back to me (it was a dreaded wait). However, I knew after the first interview that I wasn't going to get an offer. I felt that to secure an internship, one needed to excel in both interviews. I believed I barely got by the first one and significantly outperformed in the second, which I knew wasn't going to be enough.

Overall, I was very nervous because this was my first interview with a major company, and I feel that nervousness significantly impacted my performance in the first interview. Even though I didn't receive an offer, it was valuable practice. I subsequently interviewed at Microsoft and learned what not to do in an interview (like being nervous!). I was able to remain calm during my Microsoft interview and ended up receiving an offer there, which I don't think I would have achieved without the experience of interviewing with Google.

First interview: Board Game question

Second interview: One coding question (honestly, I can't remember it for the life of me), and one technical question where I was asked how I would solve it.