Google Interview Guide
Preparing for my Google interview took almost 40 hours. I never prepared so much in my life for one interview. I reviewed case studies, my own STAR stories, did practice interviews, and tons of research. It all comes down to four critical areas:
General Cognitive Ability (GCA)
Leadership
Role-related Knowledge
Googleyness
For more details, see the official Google interview page.
General Cognitive Ability
The purpose of this section is to understand to your problem solving skills.
Can you take a small set of data, ask questions, make assumptions to come to a conclusion?
An example would be like the following: How much money does Google make in a year out of Gmail in the US?
An extreme example would be below:
How many iPhones are sold in the US each year?
Summarize
Understand the objective
Ask clarifying questions
Share problem solving roadmap
Assumptions
300 Million people in US
90% of people have a cell phone
Cell phone users are locked into two year contracts
Each person only buys 1 phone
Smartphones are 40% of new cell phone sales
Apple iPhone has 35% market share of smartphone market
Calculations
Number of people looking to buy a phone each year:
(300 Million people in US) x (90% people have a cell phone) x (50% will be buying a new phone this year) = 135 Million
Number of people that will buy iPhones each year:
(135 Million people will be buying a new phone this year) x (40% will get a smartphone) x (25% of smartphone buyers will buy an iPhone) = 13.5 Million
Finally, another helpful resource would be consulting firms case study interview prep guides.
Leadership
What are your communication and decision making skills to mobilize others?
Can you influence without direct authority?
Give examples of:
Motivating
Influencing
Mentoring
Impacting
Role-related Knowledge
Show your strengths through experience
Show your ability to grow
Go deep with examples
Speak to resources used
Results don’t always have to be quantitative
Googlyness
How do you work on a team?
How do you navigate ambiguity?
The book ‘How Google Works’ defines it as:
Thrive in ambiguity
Value feedback
Challenge the status quo
Put the user first
Do the right thing
Care about the team
General Tips
Take time in the interview to listen to the questions – write each one down and take a moment to draft out your response vs jumping right in
Don’t feel intimidated by questions with no data. Ask for info and if none, make assumptions and provide insight into why you made them
Be careful not to only present one note responses. Think of a variety of ways to answer a question/provide a solution
Take a second to think about why you are being asked that question in the first place. Once you know why, focus on making sure your answer addresses the skill that question in digging for
Understand the manager’s pain points
Have an emotional connection to the products
Have a one sentence pitch about yourself
Be memorable with your stories
Break down the job