My Google Interview Experience | What I learnt from 14 Google interviews

hey guys it's iran and today i want to share with you my google interview experience so you know what to expect and also learn from my mistakes but first i want to quickly mention that i know it's been a while since the last time i posted a video it's been an event for a couple months i actually got married this month so i did spend some time planning the wedding and recuperating and stuff and also just started my new job at facebook so i had a lot going on but i'm slowly getting back to a normal schedule and i definitely want to spend more time on my youtube channel so i want to thank you all for the lovely comments and for being so patient and i really hope you enjoyed this video in the past few years i went through the full google interview process twice i ended up doing uh seven interviews in each cycle for a total of 14 interviews so that's quite a bit of interviews and i did get a bunch of questions from you guys about my google interviews so i wanted to share with you how it was for me i definitely had some ups and downs during this process and i'm going to be very honest about all of it so without further ado let's get straight into it ever since i was a student looking for internships i would apply to google positions through the career side and i was pretty consistent about it like at least once a year would apply again and i was basically ignored every time but a few years ago i applied again this time through an employee referral and that was the first time that i actually got a call from a google recruiter i didn't know at the time but being referred by an employee actually makes a world of difference it's like skipping the line so if you know someone that works for a company that you're interested in do not use the career side always go for the employee referral and by the way don't be shy about asking for one all the big tech companies have referral programs that compensate employees for bringing in good people so that means that if you get in they get a very nice bonus so everybody wins so in our initial call the recruiter asked a few questions about my experience she explained their interviewing process a little and then after that we scheduled my first phone interview we scheduled it for two weeks later so i'd have some time to prepare and by the way that was my decision she made it really clear that i can take all the time that i need so if you feel that you need to take more time that is completely up to you there is absolutely no pressure from their side should then send me some more information regarding what to expect from that interview and some tips for preparing nothing too surprising this was going to be a typical coding interview focusing on algorithms and data structures it was going to be 45 minutes long conducted via google meet and all the coding will be done on the google doc which is um something to be aware of you know you don't get all the amenities of an ide like autocomplete or order indentation so it's probably a good idea to practice coding on a google doc at least once just to see how it feels so anyways i started preparing by brushing up on my data structures and then i went on lead code of course and i have a full video explaining the detailed strategy that i use to prepare for coding interviews and i'm going to put a link in the description if you're interested so the day of the interview came and it was going to start at 10 a.m which is perfect i like doing all my interviews in the morning uh because then you don't have to stress about it for too long after you wake up you know you can be done with it fairly early and then move on with your day anyways i was asked uh two late good start questions i'm not allowed to disclose which questions specifically but even if i could have done fully remember them i do remember getting asked a bunch of small follow-up questions like why did you choose to do it this way or what would you do differently if i told you that this function is going to be called very often you know stuff like that so it's a good idea when you're preparing to also practice uh answering these follow-up type questions anyways the interview went very well and the day after i got an email saying that i passed and they wanted to move on to the next step the next step was the on-site interviews that's a full day of interviews four technical and one behavioral i decided to take two more weeks to prepare for these so we scheduled the onsite for two weeks later i went in for my first interview at 10 a.m and unfortunately it didn't go so great so my day went off to a rocky start but then i remember the recruiter telling me that the reason they have five interviews at that stage is because they know that even good candidates may sometimes have an off interview right so they want to give them a chance to bounce back and still do well so i was thinking okay i just had my off interview but if i do well in all of my other interviews then this could still go my way and then i did do really well in all of my other interviews so i finished the day feeling pretty good like it wasn't perfect but this could still have a good outcome the recruiter called a few days later and said that the opinions were actually split and they couldn't make a decision so they wanted to offer me to do one more interview and i'm not going to lie i was pretty annoyed with this i mean this process is long enough as is and i started to feel like maybe i'm spending too much time on this like maybe it's not even worth it you know this is so many interviews it takes so much time and effort and now you're saying that six isn't enough we need to have seven i actually think that a flower rejection would have been less annoying for me at that point and i don't know maybe it was mostly about my ego getting bruised but i still think that seven interviews is a lot anyways i did finally decide to take the additional interview but unfortunately i completely lost my confidence i went into it expecting to fail and that is exactly what i did i failed pretty hard i think it might have been my worst interview ever and not surprisingly not too long after i got the call saying that this was a no for this round this wasn't like the first job rejection i ever got but it was the first time that i felt like i did everything i possibly could i tried my hardest and it wasn't enough and it made me feel stupid you know like my best my absolute best is not really that great and it took me a while to kind of get over it to put it behind me and build up my confidence again to a point where i'm comfortable taking another interview i did get there but it took time so at some point i did feel like i wanted to give this thing another shot so i applied again and after some time i got a call from the recruiter we scheduled the phone interview i prepared for like two or three weeks every day after work and on the weekends and when the day of the interview came i was nervous but i felt ready like i was well prepared the first question went perfectly but the second one didn't and in hindsight i really over complicated it i was sure that i can solve it in linear time when really the solution was just a tiny optimization over the naive approach so basically i was so set on finding a linear time solution that i completely missed the answer that was right in front of me this was a huge lesson for me the lesson is don't overthink it this is something that i know happens to a lot of people especially when you interview for companies like google or facebook you kind of assume that the questions have to be super difficult so you get in your head trying to come up with these crazy complex ideas when in reality sometimes the easy way is the right way so a good way to avoid doing that is not to go straight for the fully optimized solution but to try to start with brute force and then optimize and see where it takes you especially if you get stuck that is a really good way to get back on track seriously that one has helped me so much since then that i'm almost happy it happened i'm not really happy about it anyways a photo was done with this cycle but then the recruiter told me that even though the second question didn't go so well the interviewer saw a lot of potential so they wanted to do another phone interview the second for an interview went beautifully and we went on to the on-site just like the previous cycle the on-site stage included five interviews in one day four technical and one behavioral some of the interviews went very well like my system design interview was really good and that actually surprised me because i was really worried about that one but as it turns out it was actually the coding interviews that got me two of my coding interviews had a completely different style to what i expected not litecoin style at all very open-ended very much focused on design and distributed systems to be honest it took me ages to even understand what the question was i think the type of interview that you get heavily depends on the interviewer's preference so uh if you happen to get an interviewer that really likes litecoin star questions then that is what you'll get but if you get an interviewer that likes more real life you know open-ended questions then you'll get that so it's pretty random i don't know if that's how it works but that is the impression that i got anyways if i had to redo that interview day the advice i would give myself is to keep an open mind and be more flexible you need to be mentally prepared for the fact that your interviews might be completely different from what you expected don't let it throw you off like i did ask clarifying questions and listen to your interviewer it is impossible to prepare for every eventuality at some point you just have to trust yourself and trust that you know this stuff even if you didn't specifically prepare for it so again keep an open mind and be flexible you'll do fine anyways by the end of the day i knew i was looking at another google rejection this time though i wasn't all that upset i mean i did want it so i was disappointed but unlike the first time i didn't feel like they rejected me because i'm a complete right i was able to be more rational about it this time because i think that with time you just learn not to be so hard on yourself you know it's okay to fail sometimes the best you can do is just learn from your failures and yes that title cliche is true i can tell you that i learned a lot from this process and actually learned more from the interviews that i did in ace so definitely wasn't a waste of my time i also got to use what i learned not too long after in my interviews for facebook and i ended up getting the offer that i wanted so i think the best lesson i took from this apart from the technical ones is to just relax accept the fact that you're not going to be perfect you might fail and it's not going to feel good but it's not going to be the last opportunity you'll ever get there are always going to be more amazing opportunities out there for you and if you keep working you will get the one you want okay so that is it for this one i hope this video was interesting for you i'm also interested to hear about your interview experiences let me know in the comments how you handle rejections and if you can relate to my experience thank you for watching and i will see you next time

Channel: Shiran Afergan

Views: 57,380

Keywords: coding interview, programming interview, technical interview, software, interview, software engineer interview, software engineer, coding interview questions, software interview questions, coding, technical phone interview, leetcode, facebook, Google, Technology, Tutorial, coding interview tricks, coding interview tips, Google interview experience, How to prepare for google interviews, jobs at google, google interview, google interview preparation, phone interview, faang

Id: yK_NjXfpGbM

Length: 10min 28sec (628 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 14 2022