How I Got My Google Offer After Failing 11 Other Interviews

Let me start with the number that haunts me: eleven. Eleven rejection emails in four months. Microsoft, Flipkart, Goldman Sachs, Uber, two no-name startups I applied to just to feel something. Each one landed in my inbox with that particular corporate warmth that somehow makes rejection feel even colder.

I am writing this from the other side now, with an offer letter from Google sitting in my Gmail, but I want to be honest about what those months actually looked like. Because the LinkedIn posts that say things like 'humbled and excited to announce' do not tell you about the night you sat in your hostel room at 1 AM, typing and deleting the same frustrated message to your parents four times before just calling them and crying.

What I Was Doing Wrong

My first six rejections had something in common: I was treating every interview like a Leetcode contest. I would solve the problem, get the optimal solution, and then wonder why I was not advancing. It took a senior in my department to point out that I was barely speaking during my interviews. I was so focused on thinking fast that I forgot interviewers are also evaluating whether they want to work with you for eight hours a day.

The other big mistake was grinding problems without patterns. I had solved 400+ Leetcode problems by the time I applied, which sounds impressive until you realize I had just done random mediums without understanding what underlying technique connected them. Sliding window, two pointers, monotonic stack — I could solve examples of each, but I could not recognize them in new problems under pressure.

The Three Weeks That Actually Mattered

After rejection number eight, I took three weeks off from applying and just focused on pattern recognition. I went through Neetcode 150 completely, but instead of just solving, I would close the problem after reading it and write down: what category is this, what is the state I am tracking, what is the transition. I would not open the solution until I had a full approach written in plain English.

I also started doing mock interviews with people from my wing. Not just solving problems together but simulating the full interview — camera on, timer running, thinking out loud, handling follow-up questions. This felt stupid at first. It felt very stupid. But it meant that when I walked into the actual Google interview, the environment was not novel. My brain was not spending cycles on managing nerves it had already managed before.

The Google Interview Itself

Four rounds, two DSA, one system design, one behavioural. The first DSA round had a graph problem I genuinely had not seen before. In the old version of me, I would have panicked. Instead I said to the interviewer, 'I think this might be reducible to a shortest path problem, can I work through why I think that before I start coding?' The interviewer said yes. We spent ten minutes just discussing the problem. I got the solution. I moved to the next round.

The behavioural round was the one I had prepared least for and it nearly cost me. If you are reading this before your Google interview: do not neglect the behavioural round. Prepare specific STAR stories, know your resume cold, and have a genuine answer ready for why Google specifically, not just big tech.

The offer came on a Tuesday. I read it three times before it felt real. Then I called my parents. Then I went to the mess for the worst coffee of my life and it tasted like the best thing I had ever had. The eleven rejections did not disappear. But they made a lot more sense from this side.

• Pattern recognition beats problem count — know why each technique works

• Speak during your interviews; silence reads as confusion even when it is concentration

• Mock interviews with real time pressure are irreplaceable

• Behavioural rounds are not throwaway — they decide close calls

• Apply broadly and early — placement season waits for no GPA