Google Technical

Internships

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This guide is intended to help you prepare for Software/Site Reliability Engineering
internship and Student Training in Engineering Program (STEP) interviews at Google. If
you have any additional questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch with your
recruiter.

1 Recruitment Process

2 Interview Tips

3 Technical Preparation

4 Extra Prep Resources

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Recruitment Process

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 2 x 45-minute Committee Project Offer
Technical Interviews Review Search
with a Google
Engineer
An interview coding document will An independent committee of Your application is reviewed by We’ll take a look at the additional
be used as a virtual whiteboard Googlers review the Interview our potential project hosts and information gathered and if your
for coding and algorithmic feedback. They ensure our hiring engineers to determine if there is application is approved, we will
problems. process is fair and that we’re a skill match to a project. This can make you an offer, confirm it in
holding true to our “good for result in an additional interview writing so that you can start your
Google” standards as with a potential host to discuss internship at Google!
we grow. their project.
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❏ As we assess you, your skills and strengths throughout the interview process, we
consider potential project matches here at Google. We take into consideration your
interests as well as the current needs of the various Google projects before making
a project match.
❏ During the Project Search stage, the answers to the questionnaire you have already
filled out will be used by the hosts for review, so please make sure your responses
are thoughtful and thorough. You are able to update your responses to the intern
project preference questionnaire at any point.
❏ Once a potential project has been identified, you’ll have a call with the engineer
hosting the project to ensure that it is a fit for your skills.
❏ Occasionally we will not have an internship project with a strong alignment to your
interests and skills. Unfortunately, if this happens, the interview process will
conclude and your recruiter will let you know. We'll make a note to follow up with
you about future opportunities.
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Interview Tips

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Substantiate
Make sure that you substantiate what your CV/resume says – for instance, if you list Java
or Python as your key programming language, questions about this are fair game and
may be asked of you.

Explain
Explain your thought process and decision making throughout the interview. In all of
Google's interviews, our engineers are evaluating not only your technical abilities but
also how you approach problems and how you try to solve them. Many of the questions
asked in Google interviews are open-ended because our engineers are looking to see
how you break down and approach the problem. There is no “one true answer” to them.
We want to understand how you think. This would include explicitly stating and
checking any assumptions you make in your problem solving to ensure they are
reasonable. Think out loud.
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Clarify
Ask clarifying questions if you do not understand the problem or need more information.
Many of the questions asked in Google interviews are deliberately underspecified
because our engineers are looking to see how you engage the problem. In particular,
they are looking to see which areas you see as the most important piece of the
technological puzzle you've been presented. Clarifying questions are encouraged!

Also, take interviewer tips seriously because they’re trying to give you helpful hints.
They may ask some additional questions or share comments when you're solving a
problem. Take a minute to think through these prompts -- they can help you land on a
more optimal solution!

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Improve
Think about ways to improve the solution. Share the different options or tradeoffs
you’re considering. Be flexible. In many cases, the first answer that springs to mind may
need some refining. It is worthwhile to talk about your initial thoughts to a question.
Here are some guidelines:
● You want to get to the simplest solution as quickly as possible. You can start with a brute force
solution, but then...
● Discuss tradeoffs. How would you improve your solution? How do you make it faster? Use less
memory? Know the time and space tradeoffs of the solution/data structures you pick.
● Code. We generally don’t want pseudocode. It might be acceptable in some limited cases. If you
are not sure, ask the interviewer. The interviewer will guide you through.
● If you don’t remember the exact interface to a library class or method, that is OK, as long as you
let the interviewer know, and you postulate a substitute with a conforming interface.

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Practice
Make sure you practice writing code on paper, a whiteboard, or code in an interview
coding document to prepare for the interviews over Meet. Be sure to test your own code
and ensure it’s easily readable without bugs. Keep in mind, you can choose one of the
following programming languages you’re most comfortable coding in: C, C++, Go,
Java, Javascript & Python

Ask Questions
At the end of the interview, most interviewers will ask you if you have any questions
about the company, work environment, their experience, etc. It’s always good to have
some pre-prepared for each interview.

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Hiring Process for Students
Read more here.

Interviewing at Google
Read more here.

Google Code Jam Questions

Get some practice with samples from Google
coding competitions here.

Take Dean’s advice!

Read it here, and try practicing coding in an
interview coding document or on a
whiteboard with a friend.
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Technical Preparation

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Coding
Google Engineers primarily code in C, C++, Go, Java, Javascript & Python. We ask that
you use one of these languages during your interview. For phone and interviews over
Meet, you will be asked to write code real time in an interview coding document. You
may be asked to:

● Construct / traverse data structures

● Implement system routines
● Distill large data sets to single values
● Transform one data set to another

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Algorithms
You will be expected to know the complexity of an algorithm and how you can
improve/change it. You can find examples that will help you prepare on TopCoder. Some
examples of algorithmic challenges you may be asked about include:

● Big-O analysis: understanding this is particularly important

● Sorting and hashing
● Handling obscenely large amounts of data

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Sorting
We recommend that you know the details of at least one n*log(n) sorting algorithm,
preferably two (say, quicksort and merge sort). Merge sort can be highly useful in
situations where quicksort is impractical, so take a look at it. What common sorting
functions are there? On what kind of input data are they efficient, when are they not?
What does efficiency mean in these cases in terms of runtime and space used? E.g. in
exceptional cases insertion-sort or radix-sort are much better than the generic
QuickSort / MergeSort / HeapSort answers.

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Data Structures
Study up on as many other structures and algorithms as possible. We recommend you
know about the most famous classes of NP-complete problems, such as traveling
salesman and the knapsack problem. Be able to recognize them when an interviewer
asks you in disguise. Find out what NP-complete means. You will also need to know
about Trees, basic tree construction, traversal and manipulation algorithms, hash tables,
stacks, arrays, linked lists, priority queues.

Hash tables / Maps

Hash tables are arguably the single most important data structure known to mankind.
You should be able to implement one using only arrays in your favorite language, in about
the space of one interview. You’ll want to know the O() characteristics of the standard
library implementation for Hash tables / Maps in the language you choose to write in.

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Trees
We recommend you know about basic tree construction, traversal and manipulation
algorithms. You should be familiar with binary trees, n-ary trees, and trie-trees at the
very least. You’ll want to know how it's implemented. You should know about tree
traversal algorithms: BFS and DFS, and know the difference between inorder, postorder
and preorder.

Min/Max Heaps
Heaps are incredibly useful. Understand their application and O() characteristics. We
probably won’t ask you to implement one during an interview, but you should know when
it makes sense to use one.

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Graphs
To consider a problem as a graph is often a very good abstraction to apply, since well
known graph algorithms for distance, search, connectivity, cycle-detection etc. will then
yield a solution to the original problem. There are 3 basic ways to represent a graph in
memory (objects and pointers, matrix, and adjacency list); familiarize yourself with each
representation and its pros/cons. You should know the basic graph traversal algorithms,
breadth-first search and depth-first search. Know their computational complexity, their
tradeoffs and how to implement them in real code.

Recursion
Many coding problems involve thinking recursively and potentially coding a recursive
solution. Prepare for recursion, which can sometimes be tricky if not approached
properly. Practice some problems that can be solved iteratively, but where a more
elegant solution is recursion.
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Operating Systems
You should understand processes, threads, concurrency issues, locks, mutexes,
semaphores, monitors and how they all work. Understand deadlock, livelock and how to
avoid them. Know what resources a process needs and a thread needs. Understand how
context switching works, how it's initiated by the operating system and underlying
hardware. Know a little about scheduling. The world is rapidly moving towards
multi-core, so know the fundamentals of "modern" concurrency constructs.

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Mathematics
Some interviewers ask basic discrete math questions. This is more prevalent at Google
than at other companies because counting problems, probability problems and other
Discrete Math 101 situations surrounds us. Spend some time before the interview
refreshing your memory on (or teaching yourself) the essentials of elementary
probability theory and combinatorics. You should be familiar with n-choose-k problems
and their ilk – the more the better.

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Distributed Systems and Parallel
Programming
Read more here.

Scalable Web Architecture &

Distributed systems
Read more here.

How Search Works

Read more here.

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Extra Prep Resources

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Online Resources
Dean Jackson’s ACM article
Cracking the Coding Interview Video and Cracking the Coding Interview
Five Essential Phone Screen Questions by Steve Yegge
Google+ Technical Interview Coaching Session
TopCoder Tutorials

For Underclassmen
Guide for Technical Development
How to Get Hired - What CS students need to know

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Books
Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job
Programming Pearls
Introduction to Algorithms

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Learn about Google products and technologies
About Google
Google Spanner: Google's Globally-Distributed Database
Google Chubby
Industry News: Search Engine Land
Google File System
Google Bigtable
Google MapReduce

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To practice for your interview, you may want to try:
Project Euler
ACM-ICPC Live Archive

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 G

Best of luck with

the process!

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