I know it has been a little while ( a big while…), but here is my experience interviewing at Google. Sorry that some of this telling is kinda vague because of the Nondisclosure Agreement.
I flew into the San Jose airport on Thursday afternoon where I picked up a rental car and had my first experience driving in California traffic. The drive to the hotel was about a 5-mile drive that took about 45 minutes. Although I had heard lots of stories about how driving in California traffic is stressful and difficult, I actually enjoyed it a lot. I got to the hotel and checked in. When I saw my room, it blew me away. I have not had a lot of hotel experience, but I know that this was a NICE hotel room; I mean it had a living room. I spent the evening watching Pluralsight videos (because that is what I do for fun)
The next morning I woke up, ate a biscuit and drove out to the Google campus. When I arrived, I met the recruiter that had been working with me through the process so far. She was very nice and she did a great job making me less nervous. She told me that throughout the day I would have five separate 45 minute long interviews, three before lunch and two after lunch. Then we chatted for a couple minutes until my first interviewer arrived.
During my first interview, I was super nervous. I think that I answered all the questions correctly though. I feel that in this interview, I did not do spectacular, but I also did not do too bad. Since it was the first one in the day, hopefully the interviewer gave me some bonus points.
My second interview was bad. There I said it; I did BAD. Fortunately for me, I did not realize that I did bad until I reflected upon it later. I received a question that was very easy. It was something that I had specifically practiced for and it was the only of the five interview questions that I received that day that I had actually been asked before. But like I said, I did BAD. For some reason I had a total brain fart here. During the interview, although I talked through all my reasoning and thought I knew the answer, I floundered for the full 45 minutes. A question that should have taken me 5 minutes to talk through was unsuccessfully answered at the end of my 45 minutes.
Like I said I was fortunate here because I didn’t realize how bad I must have looked until later that evening. Therefore, I moved on into my third interview of the day. The third interview went well (I think). The interview took the 45 minutes and we talked about many different things.
Next came lunch. Another Google employee met me and we talked about the culture at Google. I told him I wasn’t super hungry so we ate quickly and then I got a tour of the campus. I was enthralled by the aura. I felt amazing. This was the first time that I felt that everyone around me is super smart and they could all help me learn new things.
After lunch, I had my two final interviews. I felt good during both of them and I think that the interviewers enjoyed their time as well. I don’t really have much more to add, I just think they went well.
And that is pretty much the story. After the final interview, I returned to my hotel with a pizza and spent the rest of the night watching more Pluralsight 😉