Interview Experiences

Real candidates, real loops: every round, what was asked, and how it ended.

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110 stories

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GoogleSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Oct 2025

Rejected the Same Night After Round 1

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RejectedTechnical ScreenXP0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Oct 2025

A Sliding Window Question I Couldn't Crack

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Technical ScreenXP0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

Cracking the 111-Statement Personality Screen

Google has recently started requiring candidates to fill out a kind of psychometric test that checks their tendencies and behaviors in a work environment — things like communication style, collaboration, and problem-solving ability. This helps them judge whether a candidate has the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to succeed at the company. Because of the sheer volume of applications they…

HR Screen0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

Cutting Squares of Cake with Binary Search

One of my interview questions: There's a table, and the top-left corner of the table is the origin (0, 0). On the table there are countless non-overlapping square cakes of different sizes. The question: how do you make one horizontal cut (parallel to the x-axis) so that after the cut, the total cake area on each side is equal? The interesting part is that all the coordinates are floats, but the s…

Onsite0
GoogleSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Sep 2025

Straight to Onsite, Rejected After One Weak Review

Referred by a friend on 4/7 for an early career role. Got an "aha" notification on 4/20, HR reached out on 5/1, and had the HR call on 5/13. No OA, no phone screen — straight to onsite. 3 coding rounds + 1 BQ round. I got lucky — all 3 coding interviewers turned out great. Round 1 was a trie problem. The problem statement wasn't very clear, and I got nervous while coding, so I forgot to store res…

RejectedOnsite0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

Four Onsite Rounds from HashMap to OOD

Here's my interview experience: Round 1: A medium-difficulty string + hashmap question. I found the approach pretty much right away and had no trouble talking it through before I started coding. At the end there was a follow-up on how to make the code more production-ready. Round 2: An easy heap question. I basically figured out to use a heap and that solved it. The interviewer was pretty nice, a…

Onsite0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

Two OA Questions, No Hidden Test Cases

I finally got my Google OA, and I'm posting here right after finishing it. This OA had 2 questions total, 90 minutes, which keeps Google's usual style. Both questions were not too difficult overall. Problem 1 (paraphrased) You have a one-dimensional board, and each cell can be in one of three states: empty, a piece, or a coin. On each turn, you can choose any piece and move it 3 cells to the righ…

In progressOnline Assessment0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Aug 2025

Interviewer Told Me Mid-Round I'd Failed the Parentheses DP Problem

Round 1: The input is a string made up of parentheses and numbers, something like "(( ))2 )1( )". Index: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Element: ( ( ) ) 2 ) 1 ( ) Say the index of a number is i — for example the number 2 is at index 4, and the number 1 is at index 6. For a given number, you have to pick: Exactly that many parentheses to remove. For the number 2, you pick two parentheses from before it and rem…

RejectedOnsite0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Aug 2025

Four Technical Rounds, From a Mumbled Zigzag Traversal to a Log-Eviction Design

Round 1: Technical Interview The interviewer was a guy with a really heavy accent, spoke fast, and I had a hard time understanding him. For the whole round I was basically guessing what he was asking. This round was a binary tree traversal question (a LeetCode original or a close variant). The core ask: given the root of a binary tree, implement a zigzag (sawtooth) level-order traversal. This is…

Technical Screen0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Jul 2025

Passing the 60-Question Behavioral Online Assessment

I did it the day before, and the next day I was told I passed. This one, maybe everybody passes. There were about 60 questions total. I can't say the specific questions, so I'll just give you the gist. The types were all about behavior — things like ethics, cooperation, work attitude, and so on. There were five levels total, from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. It says it takes about 30 minu…

Online Assessment0

What are interview experiences?

An interview experience is a candidate's own account of a hiring loop — not a question bank entry. It tells you the shape of the process: how many rounds there were, what each round actually tested, how long the gaps between them ran, and what the recruiter said at the end. That context is the part a question list cannot give you.

How to read them

Weight recent write-ups more heavily — interview loops change, often within a year. Read several for the same company and role rather than one: a single account tells you what one interviewer asked, while five tell you what the bar is. Note the outcome badge too, since a rejection write-up usually explains the gap far more precisely than an offer one.

Share your own

Every published experience earns 50 XP, and each of the first 3 likes it receives in a day earns you 10 XP more. Likes must come from established accounts; like-for-like swaps and likes from your own second account are not paid. Write it while the details are fresh — the round order, the exact prompts, and how much time you were given are what the next reader needs.

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