I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Google (New York, NY) in Nov 2015
Interview
2 phone interviews in a row, 45 minutes each.
Each interview began with a brief introduction of one project in my resume and continued with technical questions.
The interviewers were very nice to talk with.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1. Given two strings, one is derived by adding some characters into the other. Find all these characters. Example: A='abc', B='aabcde', return ['a','d','e']
2. Given an n×n matrix, each element is either 1 or 0. Find the largest sub-matrix that has 1s at all its corners. Time complexity requirement: O(n^3) Example: M=[0,1,1;0,0,1;0,1,1], return [[0,1],[2,2]] (the left-top and right-bottom corners).
The interview was way more challenging than I anticipated, especially the technical rounds. I was thrown off by the depth of the DSA questions. One standout was a coding question about finding the median of two sorted arrays, which I recognized instantly — it was the same problem I had worked through on PracHub. The behavioral questions felt less intense, but the overall vibe was stressful. Ultimately, I didn’t receive an offer. It was a tough experience, but I'm grateful for what I learned along the way.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given two sorted arrays of size m and n, find the median of the combined sorted array in O(log(min(m,n))) time.
The interviewer was very nice, one interviewer didn't show up so I rescheduled it. When I didn't come up with the best solution, the interveiwer was very patient and give me hint as many as possible
1 screening round + 3 onsite round
All rounds were focused on DSA that included topics like strings, linked list, heap and dynamic programming. Screening round had 2 questions on qualifying which I was eligible for onsite and Googliness rounds. The whole process took nearlying 2.5 months
