Google Interview Questions & Reviews
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Updated Feb 10, 2012 – Interview questions and reviews posted anonymously by interview candidates.
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Difficulty Rating [?] Based on 1072 ratings 
“Difficult” Interview
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Interview Experience [?] Based on 1072 ratings
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| 21–30 of 1,067 Google Interviews | Sort by |
Intern at Google
Posted Jan 31, 2012
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3.0
Average Interview
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Overall Negative Experience
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Received and Declined Offer
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Interviewed Oct 2011 (took 2 weeks)
I was contacted by a Google University recruiter. The process is very fast! We scheduled the interview after two days I sent her my availability time. I had two consecutive interview (total 2 hours). All of them were technical questions. I missed one question in the last interview.
Interview Questions
Other Details
I got the interview through a College or University and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview and an IQ/Intelligence Test.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Web Developer at Google
Posted Jan 30, 2012
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2.0
Easy Interview
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Overall Positive Experience
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Received and Accepted Offer
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Interviewed Dec 2011 in Mountain View, CA (took 2 weeks)
I was very fortunate and had a laid back crew that interviewed me. It was very much about fitting into the culture first, with technical know how being a strong second. Be prepared to cover some basic academic concepts in regards to programming fundamentals, coding practices, and talk about testing, debugging and code reviews.
Interview Questions
Other Details
I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview and a 1:1 Interview.
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Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Software Engineering Intern at Google
Posted Jan 29, 2012
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3.0
Average Interview
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Overall Neutral Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Nov 2011 (took a day)
I was contacted by a recruiter for a phone screen after submitting my resume online. Like other posters have detailed, the phone screen consists of two back-to-back 45 minute interviews with Google employees. Interviewers were generally friendly. After passing the phone screen, the recruiter will send and email informing you that you will be matched with a group.
Interview Questions
Other Details
The interview consisted of a Phone Interview.
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Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Software Developer at Google
Posted Jan 29, 2012
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4.0
Difficult Interview
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Overall Positive Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Apr 2011 in Montreal, QC (Canada) (took a day)
This position was advertised to university students; applications were handled through the school. The interview itself took place on campus, and consisted of only one interviewer.
I was asked a few basic questions about Java (difference between abstract classes and interfaces, whether multiple inheritance is possible, why might the designers of Java not have allowed multiple inheritance). I got the sense that the interviewer felt good about my Java skills early on, and skipped over to the next part of the interview.
Next, I was asked to write a Java program that reverses a 2D bitmap (i.e. 2D integer array) that is represented as a 1D array. I felt that I got off to a good start, but eventually started to verify by trial and error that I was indexing the 1D array correctly in my algorithm. The interviewer commented (respectfully) that perhaps I should try to think it through logically, rather than trying to verify my formula through trial and error. He helped me move along, and wrote down my code into his notebook when I was done (I assume, to look at it more closely later on).
I was asked one final question: if you have a network of computers, and a massive file (e.g. tens of gigabytes) on one of the machines, how would you efficiently copy the file to all of the machines on the network. I asked him what the bottleneck is and he said that it is the network cards on the machines. I suggested a bittorrent-style architecture in which one machine starts to copy the part of the file that it has already received, before having the entire file. He asked me what the time complexity was of this solution and I told him that it would be linear with regards to the size of the file.
He then asked me if I had any questions and was good about providing me with detailed answers. Other than tripping over the 2D bitmap question a bit, I felt that the interview went well. He told me that I would likely hear back from them within two weeks, but I never did. I assumed that this was due to my school acting as the intermediary, but upon contacting the school weeks later, they said that they were never contacted.
Interview Questions
Other Details
The interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview.
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Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Software Development Engineer at Google
Posted Jan 29, 2012
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3.0
Average Interview
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Overall Positive Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Sep 2011 in Chantilly, VA (took a day)
Professional, four people interviewed, very professional, and as expected whole process went smooth
Interview Questions
Other Details
I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview.
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Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Senior Software Engineer at Google
Posted Jan 27, 2012
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4.0
Difficult Interview
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Overall Neutral Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Dec 2011 in Chicago, IL (took 4 weeks)
The interview started with a non-technical phone interview with a recruiter -- easy, standard stuff. A week later was a technical phone screen. We had a shared Google Doc and I had to implement a HashMap. Up until now, things were ok.
I had some issues with how the in-person reviews were run. Most of the questions were reasonable, but the interviewers clearly lacked any sort of experience in running an interview.
Interview Questions
Other Details
The interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview and a Skills Test.
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Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Account Manager at Google
Posted Jan 31, 2012 — 0 of 1 people found this helpful
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4.0
Difficult Interview
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Overall Positive Experience
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Received and Accepted Offer
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Interviewed Feb 2010 in Hyderabad (India) (took 1+ week)
Horrible and hard to re think again, tough question and hifty environment. Let me explain how it started from,I applied online on the company website. About a week later, I got an email to schedule two back-to-back phone interviews in < a week. Second one was rescheduled last minute to next week. Both phone interviewers went very smoothly and the interviewers were very polite and easy to speak with. Each were an hour in length, with maybe the first 10-15 minutes of resume questions, background, etc., then it quickly became technical. I coded in a shared Google Doc for both. The first interviewer asked for whatever language (I chose C++), but the second one insisted on Python (which I was happy to oblige, it's actually my favorite to hack in). I had those two on my resume, so I assume they were probing me to see if I was lying. They will not ask you anything not on your resume and conversely, don't lie/exaggerate as if one of the largest tech. companies doesn't encounter that on a daily basis!
Interview Questions
Negotiation Details
It was not that easy and I finally I got the package which expected.
Other Details
I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview and a Group/Panel Interview.
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Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Software Engineering at Google
Posted Jan 31, 2012 — 0 of 1 people found this helpful
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3.0
Average Interview
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Overall Negative Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Aug 2010 in Mountain View, CA (took a day)
For this Google phone interview, I got a 25 year old programmer who had limited experience, but who in his arrogance believed that because he worked for Google, he was a world-class computer scientist. As you might imagine, I couldn't convince him that I knew anything at all, despite my own success and experience. Would I interview with Google again? No, thanks!
Other Details
The interview consisted of a Phone Interview.
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Helpful Interview?
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No
Inappropriate?
Software Engineer at Google
Posted Jan 21, 2012 — 2 of 3 people found this helpful
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4.0
Difficult Interview
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Overall Positive Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Jan 2012 in Mountain View, CA (took 6 weeks)
This is a more verbose review for those who want to know what the entire process is like. I won't list of exact questions due to NDA which I would like to respect, but will outline areas - see (*).
Some quick background on myself: new grad with masters in computer science.
Although I did not receive an offer in the end, it was a great experience and Google left me with a very positive impression about them. Albeit, the entire process was overall on the slow side, but my HR contact was very responsive to emails and kept me up-to-date.
I applied online on the company website. About a week later, I got an email to schedule two back-to-back phone interviews in < a week. Second one was rescheduled last minute to next week. Both phone interviewers went very smoothly and the interviewers were very polite and easy to speak with. Each were an hour in length, with maybe the first 10-15 minutes of resume questions, background, etc., then it quickly became technical. I coded in a shared Google Doc for both. The first interviewer asked for whatever language (I chose C++), but the second one insisted on Python (which I was happy to oblige, it's actually my favorite to hack in). I had those two on my resume, so I assume they were probing me to see if I was lying. They will not ask you anything not on your resume and conversely, don't lie/exaggerate as if one of the largest tech. companies doesn't encounter that on a daily basis!
***** I haven't seen any of the questions they asked here on Glassdoor, but were similar in complexity. 1st phone interview in C++: was asked to design and code a data structure with specific customization to a queue, big-O analysis, optimization, and short discussions on two other problems (no code due to time constraint). 2nd phone interview: manipulating lists in Python, write some SQL queries (simple selects with joins) for a DB schema he pasted into the doc, also answered some high-level conceptual questions on data structures. Made a small error in one of the SQL queries that I quickly corrected, but pretty much got the rest without help. With that said, couldn't answer the last sub-question in each interview, but they both said it was more of a bonus at that point.
Within an hour of the second phone interview, got an email saying they were impressed and decided to move on to onsite interview. This is the part that took a while, almost three weeks just to get it finalized, but it did go smoothly.
They put me in a nice hotel for two nights which provided breakfast and a shuttle limo (yes, limo) to/from the Googleplex. The office was very nice, the whole dot-com atmosphere still in full swing. Cubicles looked a bit cramped though compared with other places I've seen. Four people sharing one big cube. I've had larger, private cubicles in past internships at other places. Not a big deal though, I guess. Food was fantastic, better than the crap I regularly eat anyways.
My big day lasted four hours consisting of 4 one-on-ones each about 45 minutes and a one hour lunch meeting (not evaluated) with a senior who would answer whatever questions I had and gave me a tour of the campus. All interviewers were very nice and helpful and really do try to push you in the right direction - some more than others, naturally. Perhaps one came off as a bit arrogant at times, but still helpful. Another implicitly told me he wasn't into his duties, but ironically was the most fun to speak with.
***** I guess here's what most people want: Two interviewers asked resume questions for maybe 5 minutes, but other than that everything was purely technical: writing code on a whiteboard. The questions ranged from binary search trees (recursion), caching, string manipulation and some random recursion (I got an easy one). Usually asked to design test cases at end (no code). They were not very difficult, but it was clear that you really had to know them inside-out. Be sure to constantly talk and explain what you are thinking. Much better than long periods of silence which I had a few times. I couldn't solve a corner (admittedly important) case for the BST question, and my design for the specialized caching question was not too impressive but it did work; other than that, I pretty much solved the rest without hints. Any time left-over is given to you to ask them whatever you'd like.
Went to hiring committee, but alas, two weeks later got the disappointing email they were not going to extend me an offer. HR contact encouraged me to reapply after a year of industry experience, which, depending on my situation at that time, I will consider. Google has the advantage that if they are not absolutely certain you'd be a stellar engineer, they will pass even if this means false negatives.
Interview Questions
Other Details
I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview and a 1:1 Interview.
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Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
Systems Administration at Google
Posted Jan 25, 2012
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4.0
Difficult Interview
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Overall Negative Experience
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Interviewed and No Offer
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Interviewed Jan 2010 in New York, NY (took 3 days)
The process consistent of two phone interviews and an offline skills test. The first phone interview was clearly conducted by a recruiter not a technical person who was basically checking off bullet points from a list to ensure that I "met the requirements" (each requirement being a three letter acronym, preceded by the words, "have you ever used...?" FTP, DNS, etc. and followed by "Please rate your expertise with..." SSL, SQL, etc. "on a scale of one to five".
Then I was emailed a bunch of MySQL database questions, all of which I knew the answers to, and mailed back.
Then I had a second interview with a more clued database developer in Californina (The position is here in NYC) who reviewed my test answers with me (to be sure I actually understood the material, and didnt just, well -- heheh -- google the answers (get it? it's a google interview? i kill me) :-) ). He kept asking me about my (lack of) a college degree, despite the job reqs stating that a degree was not required, and he was obviously looking down at me for not having one, asking questions like, "why didn't you complete your bachelors", "do you think not having a degree is holding you back in your career" and "do you plan to go back to school and get a degree in the near future?".
He said I would be contacted for a third interview, but later I received an email saying that the position had been filled, and thanking me for my interest, yadda, yadda, yadda :-(
Whatever. Edu-snobs :-)
Interview Questions
Other Details
I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview and a Skills Test.
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Inappropriate?
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