Senior Engineer’s Guide to Google Interviews + Questions

A Senior Engineer’s Guide to Google’s Interview Process and Questions

The Google Hiring Process and Common Questions

Table of Contents

Part 1: Differences between the FAANGs

Part 2: A guide to each FAANG company’s interview process

Google’s interview process and questions

Google’s interview process consists of the following steps:

General notes about Google’s job interview process

All human organizations behave like a metaphor; Google isn’t a sports team, or a family, or an army. It’s a cool grad school. Larry and Sergey set up their offices based on the model of a Stanford campus on purpose. They wanted to create an environment and company culture where people can feel chill enough to talk about anything. In general, Google interviewers tend to be more collaborative than other FAANG interviewers. At Google, the slower you go, the faster you get there.

Google has one big, centralized interview process that’s completely divorced from which team you might end up on, which means that you will NOT, however, be interviewing with your future team members – Google has a horde of interchangeable technical interviewers who have all been trained on the same process. If you do well, there will be a team matching component at the end.

At Google, because the process is centralized, you cannot interview with multiple teams concurrently, which means you don’t get multiple shots on goal. Not only that, but Google has a limit for how many chances they’ll give you before you’re blocked from interviewing again.

Anecdote from a Google Interviewer

“You can interview three times in 5 years. If you fail all three times then you can’t interview at Google again: you’re blocked.”

Google also has rules for candidates who pass their interviews.

Anecdote from a Google Interviewer

“If you pass Google’s onsite, and end up not taking the offer, your “passing of the onsite '' is good for about a year. And if you choose to re-engage in that time, the process varies widely. Usually you can skip the phone interview. Most times you have to do the full or partial onsite.”

Google is not results-oriented. They’re process oriented, which means they care more about how you approach problems rather than just the end result.

Step 1: Recruiter call

Please see the section above called “A note about recruiter calls”

Step 2: Technical phone screen

Google’s technical phone screen is a coding interview focusing on data structures and algorithms questions. Your interviewer will ask you to write code to solve a specific problem.

Tip to get unstuck

Before your Google interview, you should practice in Google docs to prepare for their unique coding environment.

Step 3: Onsite

The Google onsite usually includes 4-6 rounds. These rounds primarily focus on coding and system design. More experienced candidates can expect a higher proportion of system design questions.

AI usage in Google interviews

AI usage in Google interviews is strictly prohibited.

Google’s interview types in detail

Coding

Coding is the most important round at Google. Their interviewers are more likely than any other FAANG company to design trick questions.

These coding questions are theoretical and never practical.

System design

System design is the second most important round. Candidates should be prepared to ask specific questions to fully solve the problems presented.

Behavioral

The behavioral round is the least important and sometimes optional.

Anecdote from a Google Interviewer

“There was some cultural backlash at Google when they announced that we had to do these behavioral interviews.”

How Google makes hiring decisions

Most of the time, the post-interview feedback process at Google is completely asynchronous, and interviewers don’t meet live to discuss hiring decisions.

Hiring committee review & team matching

Google’s hiring committee consists of four to five engineers who evaluate the candidate holistically based on various criteria.

Google coding interview preparation resources

Here are some tips for preparing for Google’s coding interview:

Solutions to common Google questions

Here are common questions that interviewers from Google ask:

Technical topics

Expected topics include:

Other Google interview preparation resources