Google Hiring Process

This story started 4 months ago. I've got an email from a Google recruiter. She wanted to do a phone conversation with me. I was very happy to hear this and accepted the conversation immediately.

First phone conversation was initial phone interview, she asked me basic questions about data structures, bitwise operations, linux commands etc. But I think the questions were not basic :p I passed initial phone interview and preferred Site Reliability System Engineer position for myself. I took first round telephone interview with an Google engineer and used Google Doc for coding questions.

Before the first round to prepare myself I was studying algorithms, data structures, network, linux commands, troubleshooting. Following links were really helpful for me:

Geeks For Geeks, Glassador, Careerup, Cracking Code Interviews, System Design, Devops Interview Questions.

I passed first round, the engineer said to me you did great most of this interview! I was really happy to hear this and couldn't believe what I heard :) The whole process was very excited, funny and nice for me.

We moved the process for second phone interview. Again I studied for same things and used Google Doc for coding questions. My second interview has only one question, when I replied the question, interviewer generated new questions which was derived from same question. Second round interview was not very good but my recruiter called me and said you passed it, we would like to invite you for onsite interview at one Google office, Google will pay your all expenses. I preferred Dublin office of Google which is headquarters for the Europe offices.

I prepared to practising English myself, and whole summer went English speaking courses, because in my country have no other chance to practising English unfortunately :(

Actually, my English is not very good and when talked with employees of Google I feel really excited so I couldn't talk much so many times :) however during the onsite interviews I discussed a lot on questions because it is my job, but for usual questions how are you?, are you excited?, do you have question? etc. this kind of questions I could talk less :) Engineers of Google are very understanding people to my English. Also in Google Dublin office, people coming from 65 different countries and there are 45 different languages.

Onsite interview have 5 different steps. For SRE (Site Reliability Engineer) position, I've got following steps and each step has 45 minutes with 5 different interviewers. Onsite interview is last round for Google hiring process.

1) ​​Non Abstract Large System Design
2) Troubleshooting / Problem Solving
3) ​Practical Coding - ​Ruby​
4) ​Design/Coding
5) Unix/ Linux ​Systems​

Onsite interview questions were not expected things for me :(. I read a lot of blog posts, they say the questions are very expected, but I think some of them really expected things however most of them were not. I also solved a lot of onsite interview questions before mine.

I couldn't pass the onsite interview however this was really great experience for me. The whole process was very exciting, every steps made me very happy and excited :).  I also met a few Google engineers and my recruiters. They are really helpful and friendly people.

Dublin is not big city so there is no a lot of people, it is not crowded. It was very rainy on my interview day. I stayed two nights in Dublin. After my interview I had time to discover the city. There is river which called as River Liffey in Dublin. It is like a map to find your road :p You can follow along the river so can find your hotel very quickly :).

I'm very happy to met with Google engineers. This was very good experience for me. I'm only 22 years old I can retry it, thanks a lot to Google.