Standard Process. A phone screen by recruiter followed by phone screen with a couple of product managers. After that got an invite to come onsite. Had 5 gruelling interviews ( 3 PMs, 1 behavioral with a Director of PM, 1 engineer ). They get you to lunch with one of the PMs and the lunch is fairly casual which gives you a glimpse of the famous 'free google food' Those candidates will succeed who practice and stick to an enterpreneurial mindset day in and day out. Its not something that you practice, prepare and acquire overnight or even in a few months. This was my second shot, I felt optimistic but unfortunately i did not make it.
Questions :
1) concept to design - how would you build X for Y kind of people?
2) Strategic - what would you do if u were the CEO of X?What is the next big thing that you would design for XYZ company?
3) Sizing/estimation/consulting case type questions - if you build xyz product what is the market size like and how much? key here is to make assumptions, think details and incorporate them..
4) Puzzles - i got a couple of them....imagine u are on an island and....or u hav a billion numbers and...
5) behavioral - i did not encounter them when i interviewed at google a few years back...seems like Google is changing its approach towards a more rounded up interview process
6) engineering/CS - this does require a solid CS Foundation...didn't help that it came towards the end of a long and tiring day...last time around i also got Big( O ) estimation problems thrown at me..
Tips:
1. Use the whiteboard to articulate and frame your thoughts and go through the problem solving process...what you should be thinking of is to come up with a framework for the answer instead of jumping rightaway to a nice well rounded andswer..google wants to see your framework not your final answer....
also my big takeaway from the interview (even though i didnt get the job) was this framework building process could be used beyond this interview even in my day to day work with great results
2. Have a 'recursive approach' - which means when given a problem with which you are absolutely stumped, try to think of the simplest 'base' case...scale it slightly...observe the pattern and come up with an insight...if you have 7 bullets in a gun kinda problem try to think of it in terms of 1-2 bullets in a gun scale...figure out the pattern for the smaller problem and that is the key to the larger problem as well...
3. be creative, think about the status qou and whats wrong and what you would like to change..whether its google's products or a competitors...
4. Keep your calm...this is the most most important of all...remember to simply slow down since your heart rate will be 2x the normal...
At all times, Google's followup was very professional...u will learn of how you fared in 1 or 2 weeks and the recruiter was exceptionally considerate in reaching out to me at intervals and letting me know where the process was...a far cry from some of the other behemoths in the valley who do not even bother to acknowledge your onsite visit to them....
