Introduction

2022 has been a crazy year for me. Luckily, I eventually landed a job at Google as Software Test Engineer. Along the way, I received so much help from great minds. End of the year is an excellent time to reflect on what I've been through and give back to the community.

I also received many requests to share my journey to land a job at Google. However, it will be more beneficial to audiences if I share my strategy, which one can use in similar roles (for example, Quality Engineer, SDET, etc.)

The Facts

  • Using this strategy in the latter half of 2022, I was at the offer stage with Boomi, Samsara, Roku, Abobe, and Google. I also got countless rejected emails from big and small companies.
  • Multiple offers simultaneously were beneficial in offer negotiation (or not, depending on how you use/leverage them).
  • I tested my negotiation knowledge (that I learned at that time), two companies turned me down at the offer stage, and one company up-leveled me with an unbelievable compensation pump (compared to my expectation, FYI)
  • The role of a resume is to get you an interview, so as long as you are confident of getting a job interview with your current resume, save time and/or money updating it. In addition, please keep in mind that there are much better ways to get you an interview (i.e., referral, recruiter reaches out to you)
  • The jobs that come from sourcers or recruiters have a better probability of being real jobs. I went through a few whole interview processes without final feedback. The point of contact (recruiter) ghosted me. I applied to these jobs via companies' websites (i.e., career page).
  • If someone doesn't get a job doesn't mean s/he is not good. It simply means that s/he doesn't align or match with it. It could be that a candidate is overqualified, has a skillset, or has a culture fit mismatch.

The Basics

Know the expectations

It took me a long time to recognize that each job in the market is unique, even though companies have multiple vacancies for the same position. By that said, each of them has different expectations from candidates.

It's challenging to know the expectations. So studying the company to that you are about to apply is critical. By doing so, you understand what the company is doing and how they value things, including their employee (which you will be part of if you are the successful candidate). It can also help you avoid later culture fit mismatch.

It takes time and practice to improve any skill, and so does interviewing skill. You can test your assumptions and note what works and what doesn't.

Know the process

It depends on the position and expectations. Luckily, the hiring process already reflects some key factors. A recruiter is a trusted source of the hiring process. S/he (recruiter) is a friend, not a foe (at this stage). However, you have to be very careful and only expose non-actionable information to the recruiter. For example, salary expectation is actionable information; you may be out of their budget for this job.

Below are a few hiring processes based on my limited data and experience.

(i) Company-based hiring - Google is an example. The candidate must pass the company bar before being matched with a team. In addition, they use an academic approach during the hiring process. It means there will be a lot of data structures and algorithms (DSA) questions being asked, along with GCA (General Cognitive Ability, a.k.a another form of IQ test) assessment, practical skills, and experiences.

(ii) Team-based hiring - Most or almost interviewers are in the hiring team. Therefore, they will be your teammate if you are a successful candidate. This hiring process varies, and the hiring manager and his team have more flexibility. That said, countless variations cause getting expectations more challenging. They may follow the company's standard process, has their process, or a mix.

(iii) Ad-hoc-based hiring - there is no company's or team's standard. It's purely subjective and depends on the interviewers.

Your Values

As a candidate, you need to show off the following areas:

(i) How (good) impact are you in improving the quality processes, test coverage, collaboration, time/cost saving, tools, etc.? The more, the better. A couple of examples for each point are needed.

(ii) Your skillset and experience - be prepared to tell stories in short, and open for follow-up questions.

(iii) How do your learning, growing, and contribution desires fit the current position's needs and the company's or team's vision?

This part is tricky. Depending on how you want the job or the "right" position, you can tweak your answers that fit your strategy or decision. There are no right or wrong directions; be honest with yourself.

Interview Tactics

I had been out of job search and interviews for about 13 years. Frankly speaking, my interview confidence is precisely equal to a new grad, except that I have real working experience.

It took me about two years to interview around and test out my assumptions. Unfortunately, I have yet to make any progress in building confidence.

I significantly improved it when I recognized that there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for job interviews. Interviewers are more interested in how you tackle the questions rather than the answer itself. They assess you based on your thought process rather than the answer (even though you are expected to give the correct answer).

So I spent about nine months studying/reviewing foundational elements which can be used to combine the solution or answer for any interviewing question.

Write down and learn by heart FAQ.

It worths a separate article on how to answer these questions, so I leave this exercise for you in this post.

Sourcer or recruiter screening FAQ

  • Tell me about yourself.
  • Why are you leaving your current company?
  • Why us?
  • What are your salary expectations?
  • Are you interviewing with other companies?

Coding, data structures and algorithms

I have a lot to share about this section, but I need to learn how to write it down appropriately, so let's get started with this version for now.

Not all SDET/QE/TE interviews contain "serious" coding questions or no coding. It depends on the expectations (as mentioned earlier). However, if you target brand-name tech companies, you'll need to be very serious about DSA.

Resolving leetcode's questions is helpful. However, it would be best if you built a strong foundation. Sorry, there is no shortcut for this task. At the end of the day, most coding and DSA questions for SDET/QE/TE are variations of foundational knowledge (DSA and programming techniques). Learn these basic things by heart so you don't have to think about how to name a variable in an actual interview. Then, tweak a few lines of code to solve another variation. Saying is much easier than doing. So keep working on practice, practice, and practice (in the right and structured way).

Behavioral questions

They may have a fancy name like leadership principles (Amazon) or googleyness (Google). However, the critical factor is that you must speak their language and map your answer's elements to their values/culture/words. Again, this is purely an expectation.

The interviewer will ask you about your experience with a difficult situation and how you solved it. The follow-up questions may be what you learned from it, and if you'd had a chance to do it again, how would you handle it?

If you don't have the specific experience the interviewer is looking for, he'll ask you hypothetical questions. For example, what would you do if you were the company's CEO?

These questions are intentionally vague. So your job as a candidate is to ask many clarifying questions, scope the question, and get it confirmed before answering.

For example, the interviewer asks, "if you are assigned to test the comment feature, how do you plan to test it?"

It would help if you asked the following clarifying questions

  • Is this an existing or new feature?
  • Are there any current test plans/test cases that I can use/reuse?
  • Any documents (functional design, use cases, etc.) are available
  • The comment box (feature) can appear in many places. Which area should I focus on?
  • Who will I work with?
  • Any deadline?
  • Etc.

You may see no right or wrong answer, just how good it is. In addition, the interviewer may give different inputs to another candidate, so asking what questions ABC company recently asked candidates may not benefit you.

Resources I used

Conclusion

That's all I have to offer in this version. If you would like me to share anything in detail, please leave a comment or message me.

UPDATE (January 2026):

I'm incredibly humbled by how many people have found this post helpful over the years. Your feedback and questions inspired me to take the next step.

I've distilled all the strategies from my 2022 job search (and much more) into a comprehensive book, The SDET Playbook (Now Available on Amazon).