I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 months. I interviewed at Google (Atlanta, GA) in Mar 2021
Interview
This is a long process that they will tell you up-front can take at least 12 weeks, many people experience more. It starts with the standard HR/recruiter screens, then goes to a basic technical competency screen. If you pass this you will move on to the intensive technical screen which occurs in three parts over the course of one day. At this point they will decide based on interview feedback if you will proceed, and if you do, you will be matched to a team in the location for which you applied and then go through the compensation review to determine where your compensation package will fall. I made it to roughly the last step of this process before accepting a software engineering job elsewhere but I would absolutely recommend Google's recruitment experience to anyone lucky enough to get this far.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
They will ask you questions relating to your qualifications for the specific job (Role-related Knowledge), culture fit (Googlyness), and problem-solving and critical thinking (General Cognitive Ability). Be prepared for this type of questioning and to perform under pressure.
I applied through college or university. I interviewed at Google (California, MD) in Feb 2026
Interview
Went fine, didn't get the job. The questions were really difficult and they did not give me time to prepare. I don't think they were very good at interviewing. Would not recommend this place to interview at
Great people and challenging questions. The process included about an hour with HR, followed by a second round with the team, making for a well structured and engaging interview experience
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Google (Hyderabad) in Sep 2025
Interview
Very hard DSA round. It was scheduled for a 1-hour interview, but the problem was much more involved and could easily take longer than the allotted time. The question required strong algorithmic thinking, careful handling of edge cases, and the ability to reason through complexity under pressure. It was not just about writing code quickly; the interviewer expected a clear approach, optimizations, and clean implementation despite the time constraint. Overall, it felt like a round designed to test depth in data structures and algorithms rather than a standard timed coding exercise.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
It was a very hard DSA round with a complex tree-based problem. Although the interview was scheduled for 1 hour, the problem felt like it could easily take much longer to solve fully. It required deep understanding of tree traversal, recursion, state management across nodes, and careful handling of edge cases. The challenge was not just arriving at a working solution, but also optimizing it and explaining the reasoning clearly under time pressure. Overall, it felt like a round meant to test strong problem-solving depth rather than a typical interview-length coding question.
