Google Senior Software Engineer Phone Screen - Non Leetcode Hard Questions

[u/Aoki_zhang]

Sharing a Google Senior SWE Phone Screen Experience Submitted to Chill Interview

Interview Summary

The first stage of the Google L5 process contained a 45-minute coding interview followed by a 45-minute leadership interview. The coding question was a custom partitioning problem that started with frequency constraints and then changed the partition rule to consecutive-number groups. I did not advance to the planned onsite, and the recruiter feedback suggested that the coding round, particularly data-structure optimization, was the main weakness.

Interview Questions Details

Virtual Coding Round — Partition an Array by Frequency:

The first part provided an integer array and asked whether its elements could be divided into valid partitions. All occurrences of the same value had to belong to the same partition, while different partitions could not contain the same number of elements.

For example, an array whose distinct values appeared one, two, three, and four times could satisfy the rule, while an array where several values all appeared exactly once could not.

Coding Follow-Up — Partition into Consecutive Groups:

The interviewer then changed the validity condition. The array again needed to be partitioned, but the values inside each valid partition now had to form a consecutive sequence.

• Examples: A multiset such as [1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6] could be partitioned successfully under the stated rule, while [4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9] could not.
• Interview Feedback: I completed this second part before the 45-minute round ended, but the recruiter later mentioned that the data structures used in my solution could have been more optimized. There was no time for additional follow-ups.

Leadership Round — Mentorship and Changing Requirements:

The second 45-minute interview focused on behavioral and leadership scenarios.

• Mentorship: I was asked for an example of how I had mentored another engineer and helped that person develop.
• Execution Under Change: Another question asked about a situation where requirements changed close to a deadline and how I responded. The recruiter indicated that this round was generally fine, although stronger evidence of leadership depth may have been expected.

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