How I did not pass job interview at Google
Sorry, guys! I’ve been a little bit busy last weeks, so I did not post anything new here. It’s time to tell you why. I’ve been trying to pass a job interview process at Google. I’ve passed 4 of 5 rounds. Failed on the last one — Coding Interview. And here’s my experience, mistakes and conclusions.
This story became at 14th of June.
Approximately
from datetime import datetime
from dateutil.relativedelta import relativedelta
def print_time_difference(start_date, end_date):
start_date = datetime.strptime(start_date, "%Y-%m-%d")
end_date = datetime.strptime(end_date, "%Y-%m-%d")
months = relativedelta(end_date, start_date).months
days = relativedelta(end_date, start_date).days
return ' months and days'.format(months, days)
print(print_time_difference('2018-06-14', '2018-08-25'))2 months and 11 days after my relocation to US and 9 days after I’ve got Google Cloud Platform Professional Architect Certification exam.
That night I’ve received the letter from the best recruiters ever meet before — Bharathi Rajasekar. Here it is, by the way:
Who don’t want to be a part of one of the biggest and famous companies in the world? I really wanted! So I decided to take that chance and try to do all my best to get an offer.
During next 2 months I’ve been really busy! It seemed that I’ve been working at 2 jobs: during the day I’ve been busy on my current working place and all free time been spent on preparation to Google interviews!
#1 round interview
First round interview been scheduled 9 days after initial call with Bharathi where we become acquainted with each other and discussed the position and opportunities. Bharathi gave me absolutely everything I needed to understand what are the company culture, position requirements and what to expect from the interview process in general.
#1 interview itself been organized with one of the Solutions Architects, who’s already working at Singapore. He asked me a lot of questions about my previous experience, technologies I’m familiar with and asked to write some code solve a problem.
We’ve found a common language very fast, especially when when I pronounced the word Eucalyptus. Interview took twice longer time, then expected, because we’ve found each other very interesting people! It was amazing man and really interesting conversation!
#2 interview
Because the interview feedback was very good, Google changed an interviews order and organized in-person interview at their NYCs office next:
There we’ve had an interesting discussion about Google Cloud and its services, I’ve been asked to solve some tricky problems and customer management questions.
#3 interview
Third interview been organized online using Hangouts. It was also very-very interesting! During the interview we were discussing one of the multiple system design questions. By the way, if you’d like to prepare yourself to Systems Design interview, I’d recommend you to use this System Design Primer GitHub page.
#4 and #5 interview
#4 and #5 interview I had in-person at Google NYCs office. #4-th interview was quite similar to the #1-st one, but it took approximately 15 minutes for the interviewer to understand that we’re on the same page. So we finish interview and went on lunch, where we had informal technologies discussion, spoke about life at Google and discussed many other interesting topics!
#5… Famous coding interview… I’ll never forget this interview, where I did very serious mistake which as I feel now significantly changed everything.
At the beginning of the coding interview interviewer asked me if I know “Battle Ships” game. And here’s I made my mistake. Instead of starting asking clarification questions, I’ve told him: “Yes, I know it! It is about…”. I started describing him the rules of the game I’ve played in the childhood at school. That moment I’ve completely lost my interviewer. Yes, he was professionally correct, but I lost him.
During the next 40 minutes of the interview I was trying to restore the communication. No result. It was very difficult to concentrate on the problems we were discussing while I was constantly trying to understand what’s wrong and how to change it.
Red Flag.
#6 interview
As soon as I got out from Google’s NYCs office I feel myself completely broken. I understood that it was only my fault, and was expecting red flag as a result. 3 days later I got it as a result.
Nobody expected that.
Bharati and all other people involved in the process from the Google side gave me a second chance: they organized me a another attempt to pass coding interview.
Speaking honestly, programming is not one of my strengths. Yes, I can do it, but I’ve been never facing with Data Structures and Algorithms problems during my career in IT. It was very difficult to try to prepare myself to the coding interview. More over it is something really challenging to write code without IDE with the marker on the whiteboard or in Google Docs.
To this interview I’ve lost all my energy. I’ve not been sleeping very well because of waiting interview results. And what’s more important I’ve loose the battle with myself: I started to believe that I don’t have coding skills needed by Google. And that fact, I’m sure, did not allow me to get to the finish.
I did the task during the interview. It was working code, but honestly I don’t like the solution I’ve provided. It could be better. Really.
Results
Waiting for the results is the hardest thing you can imagine. But a couple of days ago I received an overall feedback from Bharathi during our online Hangouts face-to-face call. She told me very politely, that my profile can not not be shown to a Hiring Committee, and described in detail why. We spent around 10 minutes discussing my results.
Analyzing whole interview process afterwards, I understood that it was a great challenge for me during which I’ve learned even more about my personal strengths and weaknesses and got some very important lessons. Here they are:
- “Speak less, than listen”
- “Always save energy for a long run”
- “Don’t fight with yourself. Let it go. Learn the lessons afterwards”
PS
During last two months I’ve found a lot of discussions of Google’s hiring process at the internet: salaries, questions, myths, but from the beginning to the end my experience was absolutely unique! Mostly because of great professionalism of Bharathi Rajasekar! Her work from the beginning to the end was absolutely perfect.
Also I want to tell “thank you” to all the Googlers, who were taking part in this process! You’re truly amazing people! Each of you gave me something unique and very-very important! Your lessons are hard to learn, but very important to remember! So, thank you once more again!
