Google Software Engineer Intern - Arabic Language - Zurich Interview

Interviewed Oct 2008 in Zurich (Switzerland) (took a day)

I applied for the position online. Two weeks later, I got an email from an intern recruiter who asked me some questions:

- What sort of internship project would you be interested in working on?
- What are your greatest strengths?
- How much coding do you do on a regular basis and what is your favorite programming language?
- When would you be available to start an internship, and for how long?
- Does your university require that you do an internship to complete your studies?
- What are your extra-curricular interests?

I replied to the questions and then I got another email asking me to rate myself in Algorithms and Data Structures. One week later I was scheduled a phone interview for the following week. I was advised to familarise myself with Google and their products.

The interview was a full interview for the role. It was conducted in English and lasted approximately 45 minutes. During the interview, the interviewer shared a Google Docs document with me to carry out some coding exercies.

The phone interview tests:

* Core computer science concepts

 - problem solving, analytical/design ability, technical competence

* Coding problems. Your interviewer may request you code in your preferred language rather than in pseudo-code

* Logic problems and algorithms

  - They want to understand your ability to develop complex algorithms

  - You should talk through your answer, explaining your logic

* Systems design

You should be able to explain how you come up with your solution – it helps your interviewer understand your thought processes

The interviewer asked me to talk about my university projects. Then, he described a problem and asked me to write a c++ (since I chose C++ as my favorite programming language) code to solve it. I made a couple of mistakes in the boundary conditions. The interviewer spotted them and asked me to see if there were any errors in my code. I noticed and corrected them. Then, i was asked about the time complexity of my solution and how to improve it. But, I failed to improve it. Then, he asked me if there were any questions I wanted to ask him .

A couple of weeks later I got an email informing me that my qualifications are not suitable for the position.