any tips on how to pass Google hc?

[boreal moat]

Congrats and ^^

[blazing schooner]

i felt like google interviews were pretty wack
1 behavioral: made up scenarios, what you would do in that situation
4 technicals:

• weird minimizing distances question that i coded a brute force & only talked about optimal
• spin on well known backtracking question i pretty much coded entirely
• weird spin on well known dp medium that i coded brute force & had no idea how to do optimal
• 2 part array question i needed a lot of hints on for 2nd part

so overall i thought my performance was pretty meh, i think the most important thing is having a good clear discussion about solutions with your interviewer, as well as listening to their hints/feedback as appropriate

not to scare you or anything, im sure youll kill it!

[next falcon]

AYY congrats

[boreal moat]

Thank you!!! Did they ask u sys design/OOD?

So pretty much all LC ?

And maybe OOD

[blazing schooner]

no sys design, pretty much all LC-ish

[boreal moat]

Ty and congrats again!

[lean hinge]

how long after the final?

and also what does HC stand for? @blazing schooner

[blazing schooner]

apply 8/26 -> OA 9/9 -> recruiter call 9/16 -> final 9/21 -> passed hc 10/1

[lean hinge]

what exactly does passed headcount mean? kinda confused

[blazing schooner]

HC is hiring committee, historically google compiles your interview performance into a "packet" and that packet is sent to the HC for engineers to review whether or not you passed, they might call it something different now

[lean hinge]

ohhh i thought this was headcount

i almost thought google reached their limit hahah

thanks!

[open elm]

Hey mind if I dm you about your process in deciding which company you're going to take?

[vestal barn]

same q ^. how long did it take to hear after final? thanks!

@lean hinge hiring committee

[blazing schooner]

see above timeline

[vestal barn]

oh my bad thanks!!

[lean hinge]

how much did you study before hand since you had like 11 days before the final after your OA?

[paper hemlock]

Were the qs modifications of LC tagged ones? Or totally different?

[blazing schooner]

i dont have lc premium so im not sure

[blazing schooner]

err not much to be honest, went into it mostly blind

i just kinda banked on my previous interviewing experiences

[next falcon]

You make it sounds so easy

But yeah, thanks for sharing! It makes me feel a lot better knowing that they don't care much about coding the most optimal solution

[blazing schooner]

sorry definitely not trying to come off that way, in fact i thought i had a lot to improve on

yeah i think communication was by far the most important rather than immediately coding a perfect solution

[next falcon]

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. 2 years ago I failed because I solved the problems but literally stuttered while explaining my thoughts lol

That was my first ever interview so... yeah. Haven't face that since then

Btw, did anyone ask follow up questions or did everyone just ask 1 question?

[paper hemlock]

@blazing schooner how would you recommend preparing for behavioral?? I'm kinda weak in that :(

[lean hinge]

^^

like after you do ur star interview thing do they ask follow ups?

or do they just agree with you and write stuff down

[ornate anvil]

Hi, can you share with me more about Google's process (not timeline). What happens after final and what is HC? (As in is it just that your app is reviewed by them or are you having additional interviews with them), and what happens next?

[lean hinge]

Just wondering if there is an another interview for team matching?

and did your code have to run? or were there no compliation features on the editor

[vestal barn]

I did final so I know there’s no compilation feature

As far as I know there’s no team matching interviews for new grads, only interns

[next falcon]

Also did he care about what language you chose to implement the code?

I like to choose the language based on the question. So, I'm wondering if that's possible

[vestal barn]

Interviewers knew my preferred language and asked if that language was still okay

So I’m guessing you can change it

[next falcon]

Ah gotcha!

[paper hemlock]

@vestal barn could you throw some light on the googlyness round?? How should one prepare for that? (Like they have LP Amazon, does Google have anything like that?)

[vestal barn]

@paper hemlock it’s just a typical behavioral interview. They ask the common scenarios where you have conflict in a team. Or when have you shown leadership. Or a time where you went above and beyond

Look up behaviorism interview and do the most asked questions

[paper hemlock]

Thankyouu!

[lean hinge]

did you answer all of them in STAR format?

[next falcon]

Btw, what all graph theory algorithms do you recommend I know?

[vestal barn]

yeah kinda I’m usually good w behavioral so I don’t really use that format specifically

[vestal barn]

Hmm I didn’t get asked any graph algorithms tbh but maybe know dfs and bfs

[knotty flare]

@blazing schooner just curious, did they schedule a quick chat to let you know you pass?

I have one today but i just did the final on Friday (3 business days ago). So turnaround time is a little too fast right?

[vestal barn]

I did mine last Wednesday and still waiting ☹️

[lean hinge]

how well did you think you did on each technical?

[vestal barn]

Pretty good honestly

[knotty flare]

A friend of mine also goes through the process as well on Wednesday and still waiting. So I'm not sure what the chat today will be about haha.

[cedar tree]

@knotty flare how was the phone call

[knotty flare]

Didn't get the offer

[lean hinge]

how well did you do?

[knotty flare]

They did provide feedback

[lean hinge]

did you solve all questions?

[knotty flare]

I did well on leadership interview but lost points on data structures

Was only able to solve initial question for only 3 of them but for all the follow ups I need hints

[lean hinge]

like im guessing you didnt solve every question? or was it not optimal solutions

[knotty flare]

Wasn't able to solve 1

[lean hinge]

gotcha, thanks!

[cedar tree]

wow :/ so you have to solve the followups to pass

[lean hinge]

are the followups like a whole seperate question? or is it like lets say I have the question number of islands on leetcode, and I solve it with a DFS function, and hypothetically the interviewer ask, (can you solve it with BFS?)

[knotty flare]

It's the same question but with added stuff like weighted edges or min max stuff

[ornate anvil]

Dang Google seems hard

weighted graphs wtf

[paper hemlock]

@knotty flare what was the level for the initial qs?? Medium or straight hard?

[knotty flare]

I'd say that the initial qs are medium/hard. But i did get one that was straight hard, wasn't able to solve it.

[paper hemlock]

Ohh damnn, i have my final next week, hella nervous for this very thing : straight up hards

[knotty flare]

dont worry - just make sure you do a lot of graphs and trees.

and dfs and bfs.

[paper hemlock]

Gotcha! All your qs were graphs!?

[knotty flare]

3/4 were. the other one was queue

[paper hemlock]

Ahh, i see. Thank you soo much kind person :)

[ornate anvil]

bro so many graphs

[lean hinge]

and DP?

any**

[knotty flare]

no dp for me. for one question i thought it was dp but was not lol. it was bfs

[limpid kite]

had pretty similar timelines as you. applied 8/30, got and did OA 9/14, skipped recruiter call, got final 9/23, did final 9/27, passed hc 10/8