Google

I applied for the Google Software Engineering Intern position through the off-campus route and was initially contacted for a screening conversation. The first discussion was fairly relaxed. I was asked about my projects, the programming languages I was comfortable using, and my coding experience. I also had to briefly explain one project from my resume, so I made sure I could clearly describe both what I built and the reasoning behind the technical choices. After clearing that stage, I was scheduled for the technical interviews. The interviews were heavily focused on problem solving rather than theoretical CS questions. In the first technical round, I received a binary-tree problem. The initial problem was manageable, but the important part was explaining the approach before jumping into implementation. I walked through the traversal I wanted to use, discussed the edge cases, and then coded the solution. After that, the interviewer asked whether I could improve the approach and what the complexity would be. I had enough time to discuss the optimization and test the solution with a few examples. The second round felt more challenging. The problem was based around a greedy approach, but the difficulty was not immediately obvious from the statement. I spent some time trying to understand what property would allow the greedy solution to work. I initially considered another approach, explained it, and then received a small hint from the interviewer. That helped me identify the intended pattern, after which I was able to complete the solution and explain why the greedy choice was valid. One thing I noticed throughout the interviews was that the interviewer paid attention to my reasoning, not just whether the final code compiled. I was repeatedly asked about complexity, edge cases, and whether there was a more efficient way to solve the problem. I therefore made a conscious effort to think aloud instead of silently writing code. After the technical rounds, I waited for the final decision. I eventually received the offer. The overall process was quite different from a standard interview where memorizing a large collection of problems is enough. I felt that being able to break an unfamiliar problem down, communicate the reasoning clearly, and respond to follow-ups was equally important.