Google

I applied off-campus for the Software Engineer Intern role at Google and eventually received an interview opportunity. Before the technical rounds, I had a short recruiter/phone discussion where we talked about my background, projects, coding profiles, CGPA and previous problem-solving experience. Similar India-based experiences also mention questions around LeetCode/Codeforces profiles and academics. The technical process consisted of two DSA-focused rounds. Both interviews were around 45 minutes and the interviewer expected me to explain my approach before coding. In the first round, I was given an array/string-based problem. I initially explained a brute-force approach and then worked towards an optimized solution. There was a follow-up that required modifying the original approach. The interviewer focused heavily on complexity, edge cases and why I was choosing a particular data structure. The second round was more challenging. I was given a problem involving trees and had to think about an efficient traversal/optimization. I could come up with the basic solution, but the follow-up required a deeper observation and I struggled to reach the optimal approach within the remaining time. Publicly shared Google intern experiences from India similarly describe medium-to-hard DSA questions with follow-ups. I communicated my thought process throughout, but I wasn't able to perform consistently across both rounds. After the interviews, I received a rejection from the recruiting team. Overall, it was a valuable experience and showed me that for Google interviews, solving the problem isn't enough; explaining the reasoning, handling follow-ups and reaching an optimal solution under time pressure are equally important.