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Google techie reveals 7 must-know topics to clear screening round: 'I got rejected twice...'
A Google engineer shared key topics for the screening round, stressing its importance.
A Hyderabad-based Google techie has highlighted seven crucial topics for candidates preparing for the tech giant’s screening round. Her advice, shared in a now-viral post on X (formerly Twitter), has caught the attention of aspiring engineers.
(Also read: Bengaluru techie calls out ‘Google influencer behaviour’ of employees who ‘have free lunch, make videos’)
"Clearing this stage should be your priority"
The woman named Anu Sharma candidly revealed that she had faced rejection twice in the screening round, emphasising the importance of mastering these topics. "I got rejected here twice because most eliminations happen at this stage, so clearing it should be your priority," she wrote.
In her post, Sharma urged candidates to focus on the following areas:
Arrays: Sliding window, two pointers, binary search, sorting, greedy algorithms
Strings: Palindromes, pattern matching
Stacks and queues: Next greater/smaller element, BFS, flood fill
Trees: Binary trees, BSTs, traversals
Graphs: DFS, BFS, Dijkstra's, MST (Prim's/Kruskal's), DSU
Heaps: Min/max heap, Kth smallest/largest element
Recursion and backtracking (very very important): Permutations and combinations
She further advised against spending time on less frequently asked topics. "Don't waste time on topics like segment trees and tries, as they are rarely asked in this round. Instead, practice time and space complexities for the data structures and algorithms you use," Sharma added.
Take a look here at the post:
Mixed reactions
Her post sparked discussions among users, with many appreciating her insights while others shared their own experiences. One user commented, "Google screening might be just a very small hurdle. I would recommend diving deeper. Leetcoding is not the only option now. Big tech companies ask practical-based questions. I reached Google’s final rounds, and the questions were real brain-crackers!"
Another user expressed gratitude, saying, "Great help. Thanks for sharing, Anu!" Meanwhile, some were curious about the nature of Google's screening questions. "They don’t directly ask questions about algorithms, right? I know most of these, but I don’t always remember their names," one person noted.
A user called Sharma’s list the “golden topics in DSA”, while another appreciated her willingness to share insights. "I appreciate you sharing this; your experience says it all! Learning from someone with such insights is truly valuable."
(Also read: Bengaluru techie calls out ‘Google influencer behaviour’ of employees who ‘have free lunch, make videos’)
However, not everyone agreed entirely with Sharma’s list. One user recalled, "In the Google screening, I was once asked a question about tries itself. Not sure if we can narrow it down to just these topics."
