how i got into Google my full story - Part - 2

Part 2 – The Rounds, The Standards, The Pressure

After getting that long-awaited email from Google HR, I had my initial screening — and I’d say I played all the right cards, because I cleared it and moved to the next step.

Soon, I was invited to an orientation call, where they broke down the entire interview process:

• 1 Telephonic Round: Focused on DSA/Coding (Eliminatory)
• Onsite Rounds (4 total, if you pass):
  • 2 DSA rounds
  • 1 Domain/DSA round (based on your experience)
  • 1 Googliness round (behavioral)

Then came the telephonic round — the first big test. One thing to know about Google interviews: they often keep questions vague on purpose. Not to confuse you, but to observe how well you communicate, how you break down problems, and how deeply you think.

📌 Golden Rule for Google Interviews:

• Read the problem multiple times.
• Ask clarifying questions.
• Don’t rush into coding.
• They want clean, well-thought-out solutions — not quick fixes.

My telephonic round had two tree-based questions:

• One was centered on Inorder Traversal.
• The other seemed like a follow-up, but turned out to be completely independent — testing if I could recognize the difference and push back if needed.
  I proposed alternate and optimized solutions to both — and that helped me stand out.

A week later, I got a call from HR: I passed! They asked for my availability for onsite interviews — five potential days. I agreed. My interviews were scheduled on four consecutive days, which was incredibly stressful.

In the week leading up, I was grinding hard on everything I ever struggled with:
KMP, Convex Hull, Segment Trees, and more. I was mentally exhausted, constantly questioning if I’d even make it.

Onsite Round 1

A two-pointer problem with precomputation, related to subarray sums.

Onsite Round 2

A recursive tree problem involving contiguous and isolated identical values.

Onsite Round 3

The interviewer didn’t show up, so it got postponed a week.
When it finally happened, it was a stack-based question involving bracket matching and equation simplification.

Googliness Round

Focused on behavioral aspects — leadership, pressure handling, communication, and ethics.

All these rounds, back to back, were mentally draining. I had panic attacks. At one point, I was literally crying and breathless during the interview, but somehow — I held it together.

I cleared 3 out of 4 rounds. The one I missed? The one where anxiety truly got the best of me.

Still, HR told me that passing 2 was enough, and I’d done really well — so they pushed me forward. I went through team matching and everything was going well... until it wasn’t.

Hiring Committee backed out , probably concerned about the one failed round, scheduled 2 more DSA interviews to be safe 🙃.

Then began a 2-month delay full of reschedules and uncertainty.

Onsite Round 4

An array-based problem involving greedy strategy, prefix sums, and hashmap balancing.
It felt like solving a complex necklace arrangement problem — but the question was poorly worded, and the test cases were brutal. I was on the edge the whole time.

Onsite Round 5

Thankfully, this was a Leetcode contest problem I’d solved 2 months ago and was daily problem a week ago 😉. The follow-up was the same, but seeing me solve quickly, the interviewer got suspicious and gave me a third follow-up.
Luckily, I had my heap, two-pointer, and binary search strategies ready — and nailed it.

After those two final rounds, I felt hopeful but also scared.
What if they think I cheated?
What if they drop me now?
I had worked too hard and come too far.

But the truth is — the real game is in how you communicate.
How you shape the problem, how you ask the right questions, how you structure your thoughts.

There were moments I was running out of time, but because my approach was solid and I picked the right data structures, I was given a pass.

A week later, HR called:

“It’s all positive! …But your matched team has moved on.”

Back to team-matching — again.

Two more weeks. Two more screenings.
Finally… I found my team.

In the next part, I’ll share how the salary negotiation unfolded, along with the perks, benefits, and everything else that came with the offer — stay tuned!

Answer to comments

1. YOE - 1.5 yrs, I have consistent leetcode streak, guardian and more than 2k problems solved on leetcode, i was in service base.

2. i got hired for L3
3. Sorry I cant share the exact problem from my interviews but it was 2 pointer problem with follow up as binary search and 2 pointer.
4. yes, my hr told me that i had 3 positive responses,I already knew i was fail in 1 interview so wasnt hard for me to understand which one they meant and the reasoning.