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Updated May 28, 2012 – Interview questions and reviews posted anonymously by interview candidates.
Ratings are reflective of location and job title.

Difficulty Rating [?] Based on 393 ratings

3.5

“Difficult” Interview

Interview Experience [?] Based on 393 ratings

Positive	41%
Neutral	37%
Negative	22%

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3.0

Average Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Aug 2010 in Mountain View, CA (took a day)

Google uses relatively junior programmers to screen candidates, because the senior programmers apparently don't want to take the time to do it. These programmers focus on computer science questions, and even if you answer their questions correctly, they don't thereafter ask you anything about your past experience or qualifications. A manager who was looking to hire someone into Google would probably do a better job of interviewing potential candidates.

Interview Questions

Items are pushed onto a stack, and therefore may be accessed in a last-in-first-out (LIFO) manner. How might you access these items in a first-in-first-out (FIFO) manner?

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Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

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4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jan 2012 in Mountain View, CA (took 3 months)

The whole process took about 3 months, from the original conversation with the recruiter. I got a call from the recruiter and had a phone screen. After the phone screen, I heard back the next day, inviting me to come onsite to Mountain View. However, it took about 2 weeks to just schedule the on-site, which was then about 2 weeks off. In Mountain View, I interviewed with 4 people, and one for lunch. After the on-site interview, I sent thank you letters, but did not hear anything back for weeks. Then I followed up with a phone call, and again, and learned that the recruiter has not yet received feedback from people I interviewed with (this is now weeks past). When I followed up again, they said still no review, but they'd like to ask me to come out to Mountain View the second time, so that, as the recruiter has put it, she can get the required number of interviews in. This made me curious as to the whole review process. The candidate takes the time to prepare for the interview, fly to a different city, do their best, and the reviewer does not bother to submit their feedback (and is not pushed by Google to do so). Strange.

Second round on campus was with 2 people. After that, heard back in 2 weeks. All in all took 3 months.

Interview Questions

What is the best way to sort a terabyte of array of data, when you have limited RAM (500k), and each array element has a couple of items of data, at about 1-10k each.

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What is the product you are most proud of releasing and why.

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Other Details

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

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4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Sep 2010 in Mountain View, CA (took 6+ weeks)

There was one phone screen, two phone interviews, and one in person interview. The phone interviews were mostly puzzle solving and algorithms. The in person interview was all just your basic CS questions. Oddly enough they didn't ask much about my background, anything on my resume, or any of my side projects. I would recommend you know your CS algorithms and data structures, and to practice puzzle solving since you will definitely be asked a lot of those.

Interview Questions

What was the hardest problem you've ever solved and how?

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How do you implement a hash?

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Other Details

I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview and a Skills Test.

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2.0

Easy Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jan 2012 in Mountain View, CA (took 1 week)

I was contacted by a Google recruiter to first schedule a phone interview.
The phone interview was to be held on the phone and through Google docs where both the interviewer and I could type in text on the same page.
When talking to the recruiter, she asked me what languages I was the strongest in. I responded that my most recent languages were C and Matlab. She said that the interview would be in one of these two languages, but that the potential on-site interview could be in anything on my resume. My most recent background is in embedded systems development, but to my complete surprise once the phone interview started, the interviewer asked questions in C++. I did answer the initial basic C++ question correctly, but I was not prepared to answer the C++ questions and I asked the interviewer if she was familiar with my background and if she could switch to C instead. She did.
During the interview she asked about software implementation of the cache driver first. We had a detailed discussion about it. Then she asked if I was familiar with binary trees. I said that I have heard of them, but never used them, and explained that I have used linked lists in the past and implemented basic search functions on them. We later discussed differences between arrays and linked lists and I answered all her questions correctly. So, in total, of the questions she did ask, I answered all of them correctly and frankly did not find them very insightful or difficult.

A week later, I received the call from the recruiter that I would not have any further interviews. Citing company policy, she declined to provide specifics. She did say that they were looking for people with broad backgrounds.

Here is what I think happened.

In short, the interviewer's background was completely different from mine. I would not have any issue with that, after all Google is a software company, but that is not how the process was explained to me. I was prepared for a completely different type of interview, based on the comments from the recruiter. Not only did the recruiter set me up for a different type of interview, the interviewer herself was completely not familiar with my background. There seem to be limited communication between the recruiter and the interviewer and little understanding of my qualifications on their behalf.

I feel misled, because I should have not been told by the recruiter that the interview would be conducted in C, whereas clearly the interviewer must have had her eyes set on C++. I would have prepared for a C++ interview if it were not for the comments by the recruiter. For sure I would have not asked to switch to C, if I had any inclination that C++ were so important to them. The interviewer should have insisted on conducting the interview in C++, if it were so important. She should have insisted on my answering the binary tree questions, if they were so important.

Lessons learned:
1. Do not take everything the recruiter tells you as 100% accurate. Google is now a large company and has large company policies, meaning the recruiter may have very limited communication with the interviewer.
2. Be prepared for any type of questions, regardless of your own background. It may not be checked.
3. Be prepared for specific skill tests, not only for evaluation of your thinking ability. In spite of Google claiming that the interview process is about determining how candidates think, it is apparently not always true. I have IQ over 170. My logic in my answers was 100% accurate, but I did not want to discuss issues I was not prepared for. I do not think the interviewer was interested in my thought process or in my thinking capability. It appears that she was merely interested in me solving academic problems that she knew the answers to.

Interview Questions

Desing a 4-way software cache driver.

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Other Details

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

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2.0

Easy Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Received and Accepted Offer

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

What is prototypical inheritance and why would you use it?

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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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3.0

Average Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

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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4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

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

Phone: resume, custom queue data structure, list manipulation in Python, SQL, couple other short questions (no code)

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Onsite: binary search trees, string manipulation, designing a cache, recursion

Answer Question

Both: Big-O analysis, optimize, design test cases

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Other Details

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

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Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed May 2011 in Mountain View, CA (took 1+ week)

They asked general questions, nothing related to what was on my resume, file merging question and I felt they were looking for large data set file merging, while I work with in-memory data structures.

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

2.0

Easy Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Received and Accepted Offer

Interviewed Jan 2011 in Mountain View, CA (took 2 days)

I was first contacted by a sourcer who conducted an initial prescreen. Very basic info - what Google products do you use, what's your background, education, etc. Then, he set up an interview for me in the NYC office (I was home in New York), but via video conference with team members in Mountain View. The interview was supposed to consist of 3 back-to-back 20 minute interviews. However, during the first interview, it became clear that I wasn't a good fit for the RC (Recruiting Coordinator) role and I would be a better fit for a Sourcer role. After the first person finished with me, she found two Sourcers to come in and complete the interviews.

I was very impressed by Google's ability to turn on a dime and re-route me mid-interview for a role that was a better fit. About one week later, I received a call with an offer.

Interview Questions

So you graduated with a pretty good GPA. How'd you do that?

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Negotiation Details

I didn't do any negotiation because I was satisfied with their initial offer. I was fresh out of college and happy to take anything I was offered.

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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Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jun 2011 in Mountain View, CA (took 6 weeks)

I had one phone interview asking about my interest in the position, and they went over my resume in great detail. The next phone interview was scheduled with the manager of the position I was applying for, and we talked more about the position and he asked me some logic questions (how many houses are painted red in Canada?, etc). The talk went well, and he said that it looked like I had a good resume to match the position. An on site interview was scheduled for three weeks away, and I asked for the day off work ahead of time, and read up on AdWords and AdSense extensively, but then on the day before the interview, they called to say that it had to be cancelled because of a recent staff meeting with senior management, and that they no longer wanted to fill the open position. It was very unexpected, and I was bummed out after all the planning ahead for this interview, but that's life! They were very apologetic about it, and everyone I talked to throughout the process was professional and sounded like a good person, so I'm planning on trying again if the opening ever comes up again, or something similar to it.