How I gave my Google interviews?
Watching WWE and listening to the Godfather theme song…
Giving interviews with a full-time job on the side is not an easy thing to do. I was working at Amazon and then came an opportunity to interview for Google. I was not prepared at all. I had not been doing much practice with DS&Algo for a lot of time.
The first thing I did was to make a routine, to study every day for 4 hours and code different problems. I used to do this every day from 9:30 p.m –1:30 a.m. It was kind of like preparing for some exam. Now, we have all gone through that phase, where we want to do everything else in this world apart from studying. So, it was quite hard maintaining concentration for 4 hours every day after work.
At night, before sleep, I wanted something to calm my mind to take up whatever had to come the next day at the job and also be fresh for doing some questions the next day. I wanted something extremely light which does not require my brain at all. So, I turned to a cartoon called, King Of The Hill. I really started liking it.
Then, it became a routine to watch an episode of King Of the Hill at night before sleeping. It helped me sleep calmly. This went on throughout the preparation period.
Then came the time for interviews. The interviews were not in a day, where just give them and be done in a day. They spawned over a week. So, after giving each interview, there was a day of office work in between to give the next one.
Now, what to do before and after the interview? This is what I did. Before every interview, I was just too stressed and tensed as anyone would be. So, every day, before the interview, I had some black coffee to fire up my brain. After that, just 5 minutes before every interview, I used to listen to the Godfather theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWqKPWO5T4o. It helped me get calm and at the same time stay motivated enough to solve whatever comes in the interview. The song, somehow also gave me a sense, that “this shall too pass”.
After the interviews, I used to be so tired to do anything. Interviewing takes up a huge toll. At this time, I started watching some weird thing to take this toll off. I started watching WWE matches on youtube along with the Trevor Noah daily show, where he talked about the things that happened in the week or the day. I don’t know why I started watching these. If I watch any of these things today, I get bored. But at those times, these used to make me calm. War was on the brim between Russia and Ukraine. Listening to Trevor about the war in a funny way, helped me realize that, there were much bigger things in the world to worry about than my ongoing interviews.
WWE(though fake) gives you a lot of motivation, to always get back up even how bad you are hit. There were some bad days, but I knew how to get back up.
Why am I writing all this today? Because this is something no one talks about. Whatever you know or how much preparation you have done, it does not matter. Your mindset matters the most in any interview or anything that you are doing. These things helped me a lot in my interviews.
Let me know your weird things in the comments if you did anything while interviewing.
