I applied through the employee referral for the second time. A recruiter called and scheduled two technical phone interviews. In the meantime, I was invited to solve two algorithmic problems as a coding sample.

Coding Sample: It consisted of two algorithmic problems that were not overly difficult. As someone who had practiced for ICPC, I didn't face issues solving them, even though I hadn't coded for six months.

Interviews: First interview: The interviewer called me from the NY office. He was an engineer from the Google AdWord team. The question was average and required an understanding of data structures like trees, as well as the implementation of STL libraries like Map and Set.

The second interview was much easier, but it was a trap! Don't try to solve it immediately, even when the problem appears obviously easy. The interview started with some basic questions about C++ and then moved to an easy question. I assumed it was very straightforward, and I didn't consider any complexities I might have overlooked. Consequently, I got stuck on the question until the end and wrote code full of bugs.

In my experience, Google interviewers don't focus on hard CS problems. They simply want to gauge the depth of your understanding of the concepts.

Some basic Algorithm and Data Structure questions.