Pass The Resume Screening
The first part of Googles hiring process is, similar to most corporate jobs, resume screening. In this round, recruiters will screen your resume for technical requirements, education, experience,.. to make sure youre a potential fit.
Although hiring criteria depend on roles and company, the fundamental principles of writing winning resumes at Google is almost identical to writing winning consulting resumes. There are three fundamental rules you must apply in your resume:
Using professional, structured, and to-the point language implicitly shows screeners that youre a good communicator. Highlighting your achievements with explicit numbers and good structures also save screening time and leaves a good impression.
Before moving on, I highly recommend you checking out my consulting resume overview and specifically look at the resume examples I corrected to see how these rules can supercharge your resume.
What Interviewers Are Looking For
We are not simply looking for engineers to solve the problems they already know the answers to we are interested in engineers who can work out the answers to questions they had not come across before.
The above thing is the most important thing the interviewer will be looking for also read the below points
The Google Onsite Interview
The Google onsite round involves speaking to a number of Googlers. Usually this will include four to six separate interviews, including one lunch interview.
Generally, you will be asked primarily coding interview questions and potentially one or two system design questions as well.
The more experience you have, the higher proportion of system design and topic-specific questions you can expect to be asked. Google rarely asks any system design questions to engineers with less than 5 years of experience.
Each interviewer collects feedback on how well you performed during the one-on-one interview with you. This feedback is collected by each interviewer independently as to eliminate cross-chatter and biases between your interviewers. If you felt as if you performed subpar in one of the interviews, that baggage stays there and does not follow you into the next interview.
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How Long Is The Interview Process
Historically, Googles infamous interview process involved 15-25 interviews over a period of 6-9 months. It has since been whittled down to 4-9 interviews over a period of about two months, consisting of a phone screen and onsite interviews.
According to Indeed, nearly 40% of hires are headhunted by recruiters, while 22% apply through online job boards. Some recruiters say over 80% of hires come in through sourcing or referrals!
Putting It All Together
Ultimately, its normal to be a bit nervous when you head into your Google interview. But if you use the tips above, you can arrive prepared. Then, your chances of shining go up dramatically.
Remember, youre a great candidate. If you werent, you wouldnt have been invited in for an interview. So, take a deep breath, relax, and show the hiring manager that you are the best person for the job.
Good luck!
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Good Questions To Ask At The End Of A Google Interview
When you are finished answering Google interview questions, you typically get to ask a few yourself. This is a crucial opportunity. Not only will it ensure you can get details that may not have been covered, but it also lets you gauge whether the job is actually right for you.
If you dont know what to ask, here are five good questions for the end of any Google interview:
Google Behavioral Questions: Teamwork
Many employees at Google have to work in cross-functional teams with other engineers, product managers, PMMs, data analysts, etc. Youll need to be able to communicate clearly, work with others efficiently, and build trust and relationships.
Your interviewer will be looking for you to share stories from your past experience that demonstrate a spirit of collaboration and partnership. Give it a try using the following questions.
Example behavioral questions asked at Google: Teamwork
- Tell me about how you work with difficult people
- Tell me about a time you worked on a cross-functional team
- Tell me about a time you had to resolve a conflict in a team
- Do you prefer working in small or large teams?
- Define your ideal work environment and manager
- How would you deal with a coworker who you notice is isolating themself from the larger group?
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Three Tips To Ace Google Interviews
The beginning of every interview at Google will involve 15-20 minutes of behavioural questions. Hence, its crucial that you present yourself in a consistent, thorough manner. Most importantly, however, you must demonstrate the traits that Google looks for in every answer. Below, Ive summarised three tips to help you ace every fit interview question, keep reading!
Google Behavioral Questions: General
First up are the general behavioral questions that may come up for any role. Here your interviewer is looking for an overall view of your past experiences and what you will be like as an employee at Google. Youll see that regardless of the role, Google is curious about your resume, your motivations, and why you want to work for them specifically.
These are good questions for you to demonstrate your Googleyness by showing such qualities as comfort with ambiguity or a bias for action. They want to see that youve learned from past mistakes and that youve done your research on Google itself.
Practice demonstrating those values using the questions below.
Example behavioral questions asked at Google: General
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How To Use This Guide
I would suggest reading the whole thing! To save you time, Ive tried my best to put everything into immediately actionable things so that youll know exactly what to work on.
In addition, this resource assumes that you dont have too much time every day as many people can only prepare during off-hours, But Im always a big believer that if you are focused on the right thing, youll have a perfect work/life balance.
Even if you are somewhat familiar with this topic, Im pretty sure youll find some new weapons to add to your arsenal as things have changed a lot over the past few years.
Where And What I Used To Practice
I used Leetcode throughout. I would advise you to buy a premium subscription since the company specific tracks, mock interviews are worth it. I started with Google tagged questions , and my initial target was ~100 where I solved a mix of 15% easy, 80% medium and rest hard. This was before I started applying. In total, I solved around ~300 problems on Leetcode.For onsite, I solved problems topic-wise picking up 45 from each topic , some from the Google track and gave mocks . Towards the end, I also participated in Weekly Leetcode contests, its quite helpful.
Also, InterviewBitwas helpful while practicing topic-wise. I used it as a reference to make sure I did some problems from each bucket.What I observed after my prep was that, even though I focused on Google tagged problems, other companys interviews seemed easy/doable to me without any special prep.
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What Does A Data Scientist At Google Do
At a high level, data scientists at Google evaluate and improve the companys products and services using statistical methods. In practice, this means bringing data analysis to every stage of the product development and deployment process, from the brainstorming phase to product creation and development, to identifying ways to improve on whats already been built.
Regardless of the team they join or the projects they work on, data scientists at Google have a few things in common: most have backgrounds in computer science, economics, mathematics, statistics, or a related field know coding languages such as Python, SQL, or Java can deploy machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms, and arent afraid of experimentation with different data structures and quantitative analysis methodologies.
With these skills as prerequisites, Googles data scientists can specialize in different facets of data analysis depending on the team they join. For example, Artem Yankov, a Springboard mentor and Google data scientist on its forecasting team, helps Google determine how many customer service representatives should be hired globally to support its products and services both around the world and in different languages.
In order to achieve the most accurate forecasts possible, Yankov spends the bulk of his time ensuring that the data pipeline reflects the most current understanding of the business because if the data is off, then the results will also be off.
Google Interviews Question Types And Examples
Google Interview Questions comprises three main types: Fit questions, technical questions, and brain-teaser questions. Fit questions may appear in technical interviews, but are mostly asked during fit interviews. Technical questions are strictly limited to technical interviews, and brain-teaser questions may appear in all types of interviews.
Below, I will walk you through what each question type contains and how you can approach each type. Ill also include some sample questions so youll have a rough idea on how to apply the recommended approach.
Also Check: Best System Design Interview Prep
Read The Job Description
The first step to preparing for your onsite interview is to read over the job description carefully. Pay attention to the list of requirements and desired skills and decide how you can incorporate them into your interview answers. Memorize some of the repeated keywords so you can use them when describing your experience level or skill set. The more you know about what the company is looking for, the easier it will be to present yourself as an attractive candidate.
What Does Interviewers Expect From The Candidates
For each question asked, the interviewer will have some expectations based on which they will evaluate you.
In general interviewer’s expect from candidates.
-As most of the questions are technical and it will be the obvious expectation that you know algorithms and their implementation.
-They expect you to know the core CS subjects like Operating System, Computer Network, Distributed systems .
-They expect you to ask questions. They will give you vague questions and that’s intentional.
-You should always ask relevant questions to make it more clear without making assumptions on your own. Make the problem clear before directly going to solve it.
-They expect you to think out loud. It will make them at ease as they can really hear how you are approaching the problem
-They do not expect the perfect solution in first attempt. You should come to a working solution and iterate it, rather than taking much time and coming with perfect thing.
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The Google Phone Interview
For the phone screen, you are interviewed by at least one Google employee who provides you with a coding question. You share a Google document with the interviewer and use it to write code for the question asked by the interviewer.
Protip: Coding in Google Docs sucks, but if you update your preferences it can make your life 1000x better. Learn how to do that here.
This interview will focus on your ability to produce code without an IDE . Typically, the question asked will be one that can be solved by a brute-force solution, and then progressively improved upon.
The phone interview is about 30-45 minutes. Assuming you did well, the Google recruiter will reach back out to you to give you the next steps if they decide to move along with you.
Dont be disappointed if they ask to do a second phone interview. Thats totally normal if they dont feel like they were able to adequately assess you the first time and doesn’t have any bearing on your later interviews.
Statistics And Machine Learning Questions
Googles data scientists have to derive useful insights from large, and potentially complex, datasets. Thus its imperative to have a strong understanding of statistics. Out of all the question categories, general statistics and statistical probability come up the most often in all stages of the interview process. Take extra time to study this section.
Review fundamental statistics and how to give concise explanations of statistical terms, with an emphasis on probability. Some general topics that have come up before include p-values, MLE, confidence intervals, and Bayes theorem. In addition to these general topics, youll find complete questions to work through below.
Your interviewer will also ask questions specific to machine learning, as Google data scientists must build algorithms that improve and remain accurate over time. General topics that have come up before include regression models, feature selection, and recurrent neural networks.
Let’s get to the example questions.
Google data scientist interview questions – Statistics and machine learning
General Statistics
- In what situation would you consider mean over median?
- For sample size n, the margin of error is 3. How many more samples do we need to make the margin of error 0.3?
- What is the assumption of error in linear regression?
- Given data from two product campaigns, how could you do an A/B test if we see a 3% increase for one product?
Statistical ProbabilityMachine Learning
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Tip : Implicitly Show Your Googleyness
To prepare your stories, compare your past experiences with Google traits, along with personal values youre most proud of, and select the stories best reflecting those traits and values. You want to show that your values and experiences perfectly match what recruiters look for.
So what are these famous Google traits? Above all, Google places emphasis on kindness, empathy, and humility in their people. Successful candidates also excel in these criteria: learning ability, teamwork, communication skills, leadership.
- Learning ability: Google not only values excellent cognitive abilities, but also problem-solving ability, curiosity, and ability to learn.
- Teamwork: Working at Google demands that youre a great team player. Merely being an independent, hard-working employee isnt going to cut it youve got to work, think, and succeed in teams.
- Communication skills: succeeding in teams also requires excellent communication skills, and this holds true not only for Google but many companies.
- Leadership: Google defines leadership as the willingness to step into a difficult problem and step out when their expertise is not needed. One person is not always going to be the right leader for everything Google does work will be handled in small-sized teams consisting of people with different skill sets.
Who Do You Believe Are Googles Main Competitors How Does Google Stand Apart
With this question, the hiring manager can determine whether you have a solid idea of which other companies dominate spaces where Google also sits. This can be especially relevant in product-oriented roles, including everything from product manager positions to software developer jobs, where finding opportunities to outshine other companies comes with the territory.
EXAMPLE ANSWER:
Google has several main competitors, including Microsoft, Facebook, Netflix, Waze, and several others, depending on the specific space. One of the main differentiators is Googles ability to integrate its services, creating a cohesive cross-platform experience. Additionally, Google has such a wide range of offerings. It promotes a degree of familiarity you dont necessarily get with some of the competitors, making using the products and platforms feel like a natural part of daily life.
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Google Behavioral Questions: Leadership/people Management
In addition to a collaborative nature, Google is looking for employees who demonstrate emergent leadership. This is because most roles will involve not only working in teams, but also leading them when appropriate.
As a result, you should expect questions about your approach to developing and retaining team members, your ability to lead teams through difficult situations, how you resolve conflict, etc. Of course, expect these questions to come up more frequently when interviewing for a managerial or leadership position.
Example behavioral questions asked at Google: Leadership/people management
- Tell me about a time you demonstrated leadership even though you weren’t the formal manager
- Tell me about a time you lead a team through a difficult situation
- Tell me about a time you developed and retained team members
- Tell me about a time you had to handle trade offs and ambiguity
- Which traits differentiate a manager from a leader, and how do you rank yourself as a leader on those traits?
- How would you deal with a team challenge in a balanced way?
- How would you address a skill gap or personality conflict?
- How would you ensure your team is diverse and inclusive?
