I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Sep 2013
Interview
Contacted via linkedin. Phone interview scheduled, then onsite the next week.
Questions:
Phone interview
1. You want to provide internet access to 90% of the population of Africa - How would you do it?
2. You want to design a phone for deaf people - how do you do it?
Onsite:
5 interviews + lunch.
5 Interviews - 3 PMs, 1 Director, 1 Engineer
PMs + Director - Design/thinking areas probed.
1. Design an alarm clock.
2. 100 floors in a building - 3 main occupants - top 10 floors (company 1), next 90 floors evenly split, top 45 company2, bottom 45, company 3. Design the elevator system.
3. 8% drop in hits to Google.com. Larry Page walks into your office asks you to think about what the reasons might be. Enumerate.
4. Tell me about the most difficult interaction you had at work.
5. Name a non-Google product you've recently used - what do you think of it, how could it be improved. What if a feature you designed and managed is deemed to have poor ROI - defend it and the analysis of the data that is presented to you.
6. How many reviews are written in a month on yelp.com. You have no data and no access to any data. Estimate.
7. Design a car for blind people. Enumerate the use cases. Prioritize them. Justify everything with sound logic.
Engineer:
Design a simple load balancer for google.com. What data structures would you use? Why? Define access/delete/add complexity (Order of) for each data structure and explain your choices. Design an algorithm to add/delete nodes to/from the data structure. How would you pick which server to send a request to? Why? Why not?
Design the Google search service - essential pieces, logic, discuss why/why not/tradeoffs.
Lunch: Very friendly PM, had joined Google 2 months earlier. Had 10+ years experience.
Overall a pleasant and challenging experience. Was told by recruiter that they'd be in touch within a few days. Waiting to hear back.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
4. Tell me about the most difficult interaction you had at work.
You would have to do a hiring assessment first, then a recruiter screening follows. First round interview with the hiring manager. Majorly product sense and product improvement. The questions were not direct though.
Overall a lot of steps to the interview process. Talked to different people and had opportunities to ask questions. Many different stages which made it a lengthy process overall. Wasn't too bad.
resume screening, a recruiter call, and technical or role-specific interviews. Candidates complete coding, system design, or behavioral rounds. Onsite or virtual panels assess problem-solving, communication, and leadership. Feedback goes to a hiring committee, followed by team matching and final offer discussions.
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