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Updated Mar 20, 2012 – Interview questions and reviews posted anonymously by interview candidates.

Difficulty Rating [?] Based on 25 ratings

3.2

“Average” Interview

Interview Experience [?] Based on 25 ratings

Positive	48%
Neutral	24%
Negative	28%

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3.0

Average Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Nov 2011 (took a day)

Two interviewers. Each 45 minutes. We talked through phone and wrote anything you want through google doc. The first one asked me about C++. Class, subclass, virtual function ,static. The second one gave a case problem and let me design an algorithm. He expected me using hash table. The case is that given a set of telephone numbers , how do you group them.

Interview Questions

Why this industry?

View Answers (1)

Other Details

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

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jan 2009 in Palo Alto, CA (took 2 days)

My experience was similiar to others that I had heard about. Started with an initial telephone interview, and after a while (about 2 weeks) and invitation for an in-person interview. I thought the proces was fairly standard, but that may be explained by hearing from others who had been intervied before. I came back on the next day for follow up intervies, but did not reveive an offer.

Interview Questions

Why are manhole covers round?

View Answers (2)

Other Details

I applied In-Person.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Feb 2011 in Mountain View, CA (took 8 weeks)

Started with one telephonic interview. Took a month to get back to me with results of phone interview. Next was onsite interview with 4 1:1's. It went how it went , interviewers were busy scribbling down whatever I was saying or writing on board (they said they have to report this to senior management / hiring committe - this was pretty distracting, Esp when they jotted down the code as I wrote on the board and made changes. I didnt want them to jot down sth wrong and make a bad decision. Recruiter then told me they dont need references unless they are in the last stages of making decisions. They did ask for my references a week after my onsite and insisted that I provide my professional references. This made things hard for me as my last job was 4 years ago and in a different country. (i did my masters after that and now work at this company for 2 yrs) I could only get my colleagues from previous company to talk. (they preferred someone who evaluated me but not my professors). I did not get hired.

Interview Questions

binary tree successor

Answer Question

Other Details

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

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

1.0

Very Easy Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed May 2011 in Montreal, QC (Canada) (took 4+ weeks)

1) Very easy interview questions compared to what other large American companies I worked for in the past asked.
2) The Montreal interviewer was very arrogant and kept making basic big O analysis errors. I just went along with his "reasoning".
3) I would not work there if this represent the quality and attitude of the staff.
4) A friend of mine worked in the Waterloo office after completing his PhD in computer science. He did not find the job stimulating and left the company a year later.
5) I was told the Google Montreal office only hires referrals made by Google Montreal employees. I was referred by a London employee. Apparently that does not qualify.
6) I'm not convinced this office will grow beyond 30 employees (or 30 people anyone would want to work with).

Interview Questions

1) Code and analyse the function findMaximums().
2) Use a sorted data structure (a binary tree).
3) std::vector<int> findMaximums(int* Data, int N, int K) where
4) Data is an array of int's.
5) N is the size of the array Data.
6) K is the number of element from Data you want to compare and maximize.
7) The vector you return is the list of these "local maximums".

View Answers (2)

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jan 2009 in Dublin, County Dublin (Ireland) (took 1+ week)

The interview process consisted of an email response, a programming/technical skills test, and a telephone interview.

1. Email response: they sent me a number of questions and I drafted an email response- describing myself, my interests, future directions, special projects, etc.
2. Programming test: they sent me a programming question (to code/solve) and I had 1-hour to write code and send back my response
3. Telephone interview: they asked me a series of technical questions, the first question was strange in that- now looking back- it was more of an "are you an encylopedia" question rather than a question that could actually be answered. This question really caught me off guard and I unfortunately let it send me down a shame spiral for the the rest of the interview.

Overall it was a positive experience. I learned about myself: it is important to take perceived failure (failure to answer the impossible questions) in stride and stay focused.

Interview Questions

List all Java classes

View Answers (1)

Other Details

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

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Apr 2011 in New York, NY (took 2 days)

I got my phone interviews (detailed here: http://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Google-Interview-RVW854692.htm) and did pretty well. I was a little surprised to have been called for an on-site interview. I chose the New York office for the interview and I had 4 interviews and a lunch with software engineers. I can't go into specifics of what the problems are (they asked me not to and I signed an NDA) but it's pretty much like the phone interviews but a little more in depth. Google had a list of areas that all the interviewers must cover so the last two would likely be covering what was not covered by the first two.

The lunch was good. The engineer I was with was very nice and answered any inquiries I had about living in the city and working for Google. Every single one of them seemed very happy with life at Google, which really makes me want to work for them. It didn't work out this time (said my interviews were okay but not quite up to par and encouraged me to apply again after gaining work experience) but I'd definitely try again someday!

Interview Questions

Similar to phone interviews but you have to better explain your solutions.

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Other Details

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

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jan 2011 (took 2 weeks)

Submitted my resume thru recruiter. Received prompt response and had a phone interview scheduled. The interviewer didn't call on scheduled time, and I have to contact recruiter to reschedule it. Then the same happened again. But the interviewer made it the third time and called me sharp on time.

No question on background/experience asked. He went straight to specific coding questions using a shared google doc. I wasn't really prepared for this type of interview and handled it quite terribly, especially the second question which was basically a binary search. I didn't have too much trouble to come up with the algorithm, but the interviewer didn't stop there. In the hindsight I feel he was trying to see if I can complete a piece of bug-free code in 20 mins. I have to admit I'm not a sharp guy who under a bit of pressure can have every bases covered quickly, so I guess I looked like a highschool junior who barely knows how to write code. The interviewer was patient and nice and offered some hints (although I realized he was ready to fail me when he did it).

Interview Questions

the binary representation of 4100

View Answers (2)

Given a sorted array, find how many times a specified element appears.

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Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

2.0

Easy Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Nov 2010 (took 2 months)

I had a pretty frustrating interview experience with Google, in particular with their recruiter.

I applied online and a Google recruiter contacted me about a week later asking if we could talk over the phone about openings at Google. I replied immediately, but it took nearly 2 weeks for him to respond to my email (I even pinged him a week later, but no repsonse). He scheduled a call, and I took that afternoon off from work for the interview. He didn't call. I emailed him about half an hour after the scheduled time to make sure I had the right time. No response. A week later, he finally emailed again saying he could do the call the next day. No apology or explanation. Finally, we had the call and it wasn't even an interview. He just explained the process (which I'd read all about online) and asked if I had any questions. No questions about my background or resume. We setup a phone interview for a week later.

The phone interview was about average (except again, no questions about my background or resume - straight into technical questions). I work for one of the big software companies & have conducted several technical interviews myself. The interviewer was pretty good, although there was one question in particular that he didn't explain very well and it took a couple of minutes to clarify what he was looking for. He started with a couple of C++ questions about the "static" keyword and about threading/deadlocks. He then went into coding questions. He didn't ask me to code anything, just to come up with the algorithms, and give the complexity in big O notation. We went through about 5 such questions, most of which had follow up questions to see if I could make a more efficient algorithm given different assumptions. I was getting positive feedback and felt that I did quite well. I felt it was at least a very good sign that we went through so many questions.

About a week after the interview, I emailed my recruiter a quick message that politely asked if he had heard anything back about the interview and to inquire how long it would typically be until I got an answer. No response. Another week went by, and no response, so I followed up again. Nothing. After more than 3 weeks, I emailed another recruiter who had helped setup the phone screen, asking if she could do anything for me. About 15 mins later, Jeff called back and said that they decided I wasn't a good fit. I asked for any bit of feedback, but citing confidentiality, there wasn't a single bit of information he could give me. He asked me to contact him if "anything changes in my situation". Not sure what that means, since I have no clue why I wasn't hired in the first place. I currently work at another major software company which is just as competitive, and I have earned the highest possible achievements in every annual performance review. I am even in a leadership program for the top % of employees. But apparently not good enough to pass the first Google phone screen :)

What bothered me most was not the no-hire. I understand that the Atlanta office only a very small number of developers. Not getting any feedback or reason for the no-hire was frustrating, but the most upsetting was the way I was treated by the recruiter during this whole process. His time was clearly much more important than my time. Spending 30 seconds to reply to an email was asking too much. I don't think I will be applying for a job at Google again.

Interview Questions

Describe a situation in which you could have a deadlock in an application with only one thread.

Answer Question

Other Details

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

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Aug 2010 (took a day)

Phone interview. Had to write code in some kind of pop-up window. Was asked to implement Binary Search. I struggled with corner cases.

Interview Questions

Implement Binary Search

View Answers (1)

Other Details

I got the interview through a College or University and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

2.0

Easy Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed May 2010 in Ithaca, NY (took 5 weeks)

I was referred by a group manager after speaking with her at a conference. After sending my resume, I got a call from one of their recruiters within a week. He briefly confirmed some basic eligibility stuff (residency, availability, willingness to relocate) and gave an overview of the rest of the interview process.

It took a month for them to set up a phone screen with one of their engineers. The engineer I spoke with was extraordinarily friendly and personable. However, by that time, I had other job search constraints and had to drop out.