Post a Salary or Review

Join Now or Sign In

Advanced

Google Interview Questions & Reviews

Post an Interview

Web: www.google.com | HQ: Mountain View, CA

Connections

Updated Feb 12, 2012 – Interview questions and reviews posted anonymously by interview candidates.

Difficulty Rating [?] Based on 1068 ratings

3.5

“Difficult” Interview

Interview Experience [?] Based on 1068 ratings

Positive	39%
Neutral	40%
Negative	21%

See who your friends know who've worked at Google and could give you an inside look.

See who your friends know who've worked at Google and could help you prep for an interview.

Hide Filters

61–70 of 1,068 Google Interviews

Sort by

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Dec 2011 (took 1 week)

I got the interview by a friend's referral who is working at Google. It was two back to back 45 minutes interviews. The difficulty of the questions from the two interviews are similar. The interviewers are nice and they try to guide you to reach the answer for their questions.

Interview Questions

Code an application that creates a new thread and exposes a "ping()" method. Whenever ping() is called, the thread prints "Google rocks" once.

Answer Question

Other Details

I got the interview through an Employee Referral and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

More Google Software Engineer Intern Interviews

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Dec 2011 (took 1+ week)

First phone interview was specific questions on what you do at work. Second phone interview was job situational

Interview Questions

what do you do in your spare time/when not working

View Answers (1)

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

More Google Administrative Assistant Interviews

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Received and Accepted Offer

Interviewed Apr 2011 in Mountain View, CA (took 4+ weeks)

Very responsive. HR is very helpful through the process, especially matching me to a good fit position.

Interview Questions

Convert char string to integer.

View Answers (1)

Find occurrences of a number in sorted array (allow duplicates).

View Answers (2)

If integer array used to store big integers (one integer store one digit), implement arithmetic operations.

View Answers (3)

Negotiation Details

None

Other Details

I got the interview through an Employee Referral and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

More Google Intern Interviews

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Received and Accepted Offer

Interviewed Dec 2011 in Beijing, Beijing (China) (took 2 weeks)

3 times interview. two times technology interview and one time personel interview.

Interview Questions

why do you want to choose Google?

Answer Question

where is your edge?

Answer Question

Other Details

I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview, a Presentation, an IQ/Intelligence Test, a Skills Test, a Personality Test and a Background Check.

More Google Software Developer Interviews

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

5.0

Very Difficult Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Aug 2010 (took 4+ weeks)

The interview process at Google is very smooth and organized. The recruiter kept me updated at every step of the interview process. Initial round consisted of phone screen interview of 45 mins. Questions were based on Data structure & algortihms and then coding them. I got the interview result within a day and they asked me to come for an onsite interview which I scheduled for after 3 weeks.

The onsite interview lasted for 4 hours (4 technical rounds and 1 lunch interview). All the interviewers were very good and the questions were based on Data structures, Algorithms, OS/Kernel, Networking and then coding in C(or your language of preference).

Out of 4 rounds I did pretty good in 3 but I screwed up badly in 1. And that's why the rejection. Had it been any other company I would have got the offer but google looks for best answers not just an answer.

Interview Questions

Based on data structures and algorithms. Can't post the original questions as I signed NDA with them.

Answer Question

onsite interview: implement timers write code as if you are writing them in 1 single for loop in kernel.

Answer Question

Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview and a 1:1 Interview.

More Google Software Development Engineer Interviews

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jan 2011 (took 3 weeks)

I submitted my application through their online system. It took about one or two weeks to hear back from a recruiter, who then sent me some application form and some questions to ask me filled in and answer. Following it was scheduling of two consecutive phone interviews for each of which spent about 45 minutes to 1 hour. They were technical ones.

Interview Questions

To generate a fibnacci number sequence, and discuss its time and space complexity.

View Answers (1)

To merge two sorted integer arrays.

Answer Question

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

More Google Intern Interviews

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Oct 2010 (took a day)

It took them awhile for them to get in touch with me after I sent my resume in. After that, they schedule two phone interviews back to back, each about 45 minutes long. Most of the questions were on data structures and recursion so make sure you review those.

Interview Questions

Array of 100 integers from 1 to 100, shuffled. One integer is taken out, find that integer.

View Answers (5)

Same as above but another one is taken out again. Find the two missing nubmers

View Answers (7)

Other Details

I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

More Google Software Engineer Interviews

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Dec 2011 (took 4+ weeks)

I applied online through their careers page. After a few weeks I was contacted about a phone interview and had the phone interview and found out the result within another week. They called me personally to reject me, which was pretty nice I guess.

They didn't really want to know anything about my current job or anything I've worked on before. They asked me to tell them what it's like being on a team. Nothing more specific than that.

Then I was asked some questions about how I would design a server architecture for serving Google maps images. Unfortunately, I've really only built desktop apps before, so my answers were probably a little higher level than they were looking for.

Then I was asked to explain how quick sort and merge sort worked. I was mostly prepared to explain merge sort, but my quick sort explanation was pretty terrible.

I was also asked a programming question about counting bits in an integer that I totally bombed until the interviewer gave me a pretty big hint.

Interview Questions

Explain how quick sort and merge sort work

View Answers (1)

Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

More Google Software Engineer Interviews

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Dec 2011 (took 2 weeks)

Applied online for the position and one week later got an email from a recruiter asking for some more background information. Interview was scheduled for next week with a product manager.
Interview consisted of an estimation problem and some behavioral question.

Interview Questions

Why Google and why this position?

Answer Question

Estimation problem

Answer Question

Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

More Google Product Manager Interviews

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Feb 2011 in New York, NY (took 4 weeks)

I had two phone interviews: the first was more product-focused: Let's talk about some Google products you use. What would you improve in them? How exactly would you improve this? Alright, now let's talk about Google Docs. If we wanted to add offline functionality and we wanted to automatically cache some documents, how would you go about deciding which ones?

The second interview also had some more general-purpose thinking questions. Like, if you are on a chessboard and you want to move a piece from the top left to the bottom right corner according to these rules, what is the minimum number of moves that would take?

All in all, a pleasant enough process with a responsive recruiter managing it.

Interview Questions

Let's talk about Google Docs. Let's say we wanted to offer offline functionality, and we want to automatically make some documents available offline. How would you go about deciding which ones?

View Answers (1)