How to crack Google interview by Previous Google engineer Gayle Laakmann McDowell
Is Google your dream company?
I have been often asked about cracking the interviews with Google and other organizations. Some people (especially the college graduates) literally get anxiety attacks when they hear from the recruiter that they have to go through coding/technical interviews.
One of the best books to calm the anxiety (Yes.. anxiety! Over last 10 years of interviewing candidates, I have seen 60% of the candidates failing due to anxiety issues) of coding interviews and getting hired in tech companies, startups etc. is How to Crack Coding Interviews by Gayle Laakmann.
The book gets into details of the FAANG interview process, Interview preparation, behavioral questions etc. The book also covers 189 programming questions which have been asked in the tech interviews along with the answers.
Gayle is a Wharton alum and used to work at Google as a software engineer. She is also the founder of CareerCup.com and her work is widely covered in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, and Fast Company etc. She has also published books such as Cracking the PM Interview (for product managers: PMs), Cracking the PM career and Cracking the Tech Career.
Would you recommend this book to your friends and family?
Her books are easy to read and supersimple. So, we conducted a survey on a stratified sample of 1,000 candidates in Germany about what they feel about her book. And their NPS (Net Promoter Score - the survey question being whether they will refer this book to friends and family?) was above 70%.. The NPS in certain parts of the US such as Georgia, Arizona, etc. was low - around 35% but in urban parts such as NY, SF etc. it was higher than 63%. The overall NPS in Germany across ages 20-30 was around 70% while the real surprise was NPS being 73% in rural parts of India including UP, Bihar almost matching to the urban parts of India such as Mumbai and Bangalore.
A must read for all those who feel anxious about the coding, technology and interview process.