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Google Interview Questions & Reviews in New York City, NY Area

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Updated Feb 5, 2012 – Interview questions and reviews posted anonymously by interview candidates.
Ratings are reflective of location and job title.

Difficulty Rating [?] Based on 74 ratings

3.6

“Difficult” Interview

Interview Experience [?] Based on 74 ratings

Positive	51%
Neutral	31%
Negative	18%

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3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jan 2012 in New York, NY (took 2+ weeks)

I got an email from a recruiter on LinkedIn. I accepted the request from the recruiter. Then the recruiter setup the 45 min phone interview with one of the google engineers which consisted of several questions pertaining to hashing, sorting and the end I needed to write a piece of code to implement one of the algorithms.

Interview Questions

Find the intersection of two integer lists

View Answers (2)

Other Details

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

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Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jan 2012 in New York, NY (took a day)

asked technical question about algorithm . both sorting. the interviewer didn't give any hints about the question. the first interviewer called me 3 hours before the schedule, probably because of time difference. asked question about the project I have done

Interview Questions

I cannot disclose technical questions.

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Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

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Helpful Interview?

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Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

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

There were some very obscure MySQL questions on the written skills test, asking about mysql-specific auto-increment SQL syntax and update commands with joins.

Answer Question

Other Details

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

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)

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

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Helpful Interview?

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Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jun 2011 in New York, NY (took 3 days)

I had three phone interviews. The first one which consisted of general skills to allow me into phase two. It was basic questions, but very computer science oriented. The questions had zero basis for any job I can think of, however, it was stuff covered in a basic computer science curriculum. Such has network topology, TCP/UDP uses, what the sticky bit is used for. After a few days I get an email from the recruiter (Google's own in California) emailed me asking when I will call him. I stated we spoke already so he apologized, called me back, and asked me a second set of six questions.

These were all Linux based (with one or two networking again). This set was actually much easier (still CS based questions one might see in a theory test). Afterwords, he once again said, you qualify for the second round, then he scheduled a phone call with an actual Google Engineer who asked me basic IT related questions.

Actually, since I had no idea what position I was being a candidate for, so he asked general questions. He seemed to be really interested in printing problems. Like really interrogating me asking how to diagnose it, what actions I take, then said assume it works for all but one, then none, just a variety of scenarios all regarding printers. I kept focusing more on the Linux aspects, but he seemed to be rather satisfied.

While they didn't ask me to meet them in person (it seems to me there was no actual position available), they said they will call me back in six months.

Interview Questions

Describe how you would diagnose and repair a printing problem?

View Answers (1)

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

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Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Oct 2011 in New York, NY (took a day)

A hr employee was assigned to me to help me through the process. While things moved slowly, everything went smoothly.

Interview Questions

Write a program to compute if one string is a rotation of another.

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Other Details

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

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Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Received and Declined Offer

Interviewed Jul 2011 in New York, NY (took 3 weeks)

Google you're not a START-UP no-more.. so stop acting like one.. you've got nothing more to offer than just mighty dollar so please fork-up $$ just like anyone else. You've got no stock offering either...

Interview Questions

why google

View Answers (2)

Reason for Declining

was not offered as I asked market $$ and they refused to offer the job..

Other Details

I got the interview through an Employee Referral and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview and a Group/Panel Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed May 2011 in New York, NY (took 3 weeks)

Moved much faster than I expected. I had lunch and a follow up conversation with a recruiter who then setup a phone interview. After the phone interview I was asked to come onsite for in-person (both video conference and in person). The onsite interview was about half a day. It consisted of three video conferences and one inperson interview. The questions ranged from very general to specific. There were some brainteaser but nothing unexpected, this wasn't an engineering position so I didn't expect overly difficult puzzles. In the end unfortunately no offer was extended.

Interview Questions

What are different ways you would troubleshoot client issues regarding analytics?

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Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview, a Personality Test and a Background Check.

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Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Oct 2011 in New York, NY (took 2 weeks)

the process went quite well. the first phone interview was easy and straight forward with data struct design, coding and some questions which did not require exact answers. The second phone call was delayed two days after the first one because my interviewer was occupied in a meeting that day. The second interview went well as well but I was asked some questions on multi-thread, I solved it with some endeavors. then the interviewer seemed not prepared for another question following the first one. Anyway he spent some time pulling another simple coding question to me and I finished it within 3 minutes and the interview was done. 3 days later the recruiter emailed me and told me that I've passed the interviews and was moving to intern host matching stage, which might take more than 3 weeks. And now I'm going to have a talk with my recruiter and she then will give my profile to those intern hosts.

Interview Questions

I won't disclose those questions due to NDA but I'm gonna tell you they were not difficult. Just show yourself. Maybe you can find those questions on glassdoor, I'm not sure. I've gone through the first 15 pages but I did not find any match.

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Other Details

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

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Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Dec 2009 in New York, NY (took a day)

Someone called and asked random stuf on my resume, and found this one java program and grilled me about java. then asked things about linux when i said i have used it. then another one asked me to work on hash maps. the first part was stupid, but the other guy asked meaningful questions.