Applying at Google
36th time. Yes, it was the 36th time that I was applying to get an internship at Google through their students/career website. To be honest I had no hopes of getting shortlisted but I thought to give it one last try before giving up. I updated my resume real quick, searched for the most suitable position available at that point of time, uploaded my resume and filled in the necessary formalities and finally took a deep breath and submitted the application. (May '16)
Shorlisting
Days went by and I nearly forgot that I applied at Google when on June 1, 2016 I received a reply from a recruiter at Google with the subject "Opportunities at Google". I literally froze, this was not usual, in fact I tried to pinch myself several times and tried to wake up and alas! soon I realized that this wasn't a dream.
I opened the email on my smartphone, and began reading. Just like any other formal greetings, the body consisted of the introduction of my recruiter and then the things I needed to submit and sign in order to be eligible for the interviews. She also wrote that I had to appear for two interviews (45 mins each) and depending on my performance in the interviews I'll move on to the next phase. Here's a glimpse of the message -
"The internship interview process begins with two 45-minute technical phone interviews. After your phone interviews, your information will be reviewed within 1 to 2 weeks to determine if we are able to move forward. The next stage of the interview process involves finding an internship project. I will go through this in more detail if we get to this stage."
Excited as I was, I immediately filled all of the necessary documents and submitted my answers as soon as possible. I selected the dates for my interviews and then received a conformation e-mail from my recruiter saying that the dates have been fixed and she also gave me preparation documents and the do's/ don'ts list while attending an interview session for an internship role.
In the mean time
I had exactly 17 days left to prepare for the interviews and yes, like almost every other student/person,I tried to gulp down every bits and pieces of algorithms/ data structures at once. I soon realized that I was getting nowhere and hence tried to concentrate on different topics per day and organized my schedule. As I was interning at another company at that time, I had to carefully manage my time and energy as well. Quora and Cracking the coding interview helped me a LOT, and not to forget the website geekforgeeks. Time flew by and the D- day came.
Interview - #1
After coming from office I had barely any energy left that day and I decided not to eat until the interview was done. As soon as the clock struck 1:30 AM (Indian standard time) I got a call from California. I received the call and a person replied from the other side. He mentioned that he is a Software engineer at Google for the past 1 and a half years and is working on a new technology that will soon be released and would make Google products more user friendly and efficient. By his accent he sounded like an Asian to me and seemed to be very passionate about his work. He asked me to give a formal introduction about myself and was surprised to know that I had been up this late (1:30AM) to attend the interview. We laughed a good 5 seconds about it and then he asked me to switch to Google docs to code.
We switched to Google docs and then he asked me to solve a matrix based problem, in which we had to find the submatrices occurring in that matrix and find the submatrix that has the maximum value obtained by the summation of each element in that submatrix, and that my solution should be an optimal one. I understood the concept and started off by narrating my approach. I tried a brute force approach at first and he agreed. He asked me to apply the technique but I got more and more confused. My interviewer noticed this and asked to write a more dynamic solution instead of the brute force one. I happily agreed and then tried to answer how would I approach to obtain the solution. Everytime I devised a new solution in my mind, I came across more and more doubts and bugs that my code would contain and eventually I bombed this interview.
His last question was that if I had any questions for him, we chatted for a bit and then he let me go so that I could relax for a bit before my next interviewer called.
Interview - #2 (Kind of)
As you can imagine I was feeling a bit low due to the fact that I had not performed very well in the first interview but still I managed to cheer up a bit and got ready for the next phone call.
"Tring tring.. " the sound came from my phone at exactly 2:30 AM (Indian standard time). I picked it up and the person from the other side spoke. He had an American accent but to my dismay the signal bar on my phone went to zero and the call got disconnected. I felt disheartened and tried my best to get to an area with good reception but luck wasn't helping me a bit.
Googlers are awesome, after exactly 15 mins, I received an email from my recruiter saying -
"Your second interviewer was attempting to call you but there seems to be a bad connection. Since there's only about 30 minutes left in your scheduled time to speak, we'd like to reschedule this interview.
Can you send us some times in PST that work for you the remainder of this week? Additionally, please advise if there is a better phone number to reach you at or if we should schedule this next interview as a Hangout."
I sighed in relief and was literally wanting to thank my recruiter in person. I sent the relevant dates to her and we rescheduled the interview.
Interview - #2
This was a hangout session and exactly at 1:30 AM I got connected to the Googler whom I had an interview with. I was feeling more confident about this interview because I knew how worse it could get and maybe because somewhere in the back of my head I knew I was not going to get selected as my first interview went awful. We greeted each other, my interviewer and I, and then she asked me about my work and what I am passionate about. We chatted for a bit and then she asked me to switch to Google docs to code.
She asked me to solve a wordsquare problem and additionally asked me to solve some other issues that might occur while solving the problem. I successfully answered almost all of the issues that would appear in the best optimal way and she agreed. Next, we spent the whole time trying to solve the wordsquare and maybe I think I did solve it but not in the best optimal way.
Next, she asked me if I had any questions for her and then we chatted a bit and finally we disconnected. This interview went quite good.
After that I thanked my recruiter and all the other Googlers that were involved in my interviewing process. They all replied, and thanked me instead for showing my appreciation towards their efforts in recruiting the best talent. This made me love Google more.
After 7 days
Who am I kidding right? I knew what the result would be but still I had some hope that maybe just maybe I passed my technical interviews.
Here is what the e-mail said :
"Hi Shantanu,
Thank you so much for interviewing with us. We enjoyed learning more about your background and experience. I was unable to reach you over the phone and wanted to follow up with you via email.
The hiring team has decided not to move forward with your candidacy for the Fall 2016 Software Engineering Internship role. If we come across another opening that we think could interest you and may be a good match for your skills and experience, a member of our recruiting team may contact you.
"
Although this was not much of a shock to me, but what really surprised me is that how insanely fast their recruitment process is and how insanely punctual Googlers are when it comes to public interaction. Yes, I am impressed with the recruiting team at Google and yes this makes me fall in love with the company more. This has been the most systematic and the fastest recruitment process that I have ever come across with.
I feel that if I had concentrated more towards my preparation and spent less time doing my internship work I would have definitely cracked the interview. Also, I got inspired by a post made by Evan Carmi and decided to write a new updated version of my own.
Lastly, even though I signed a NDA , yet I think that this post would give some insight and knowledge to all the candidates who are preparing themselves to get an Internship at Google.
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