Google New Grad Phone Screen: Top-K Frequencies and Consecutive Tree Paths

Role: Software Engineer, New Grad
Result: Passed the phone interview
Report time: July 2026

Coding 1: Top-K frequent elements

Given a non-empty integer array, return the k elements that occur most frequently.

Follow-ups asked:

1. Can the time complexity be better than O(n log n)?
2. How can the space complexity be improved?

Practice: Top K Frequent Elements

Coding 2: longest consecutive tree path

Given a binary tree, find the longest path that moves from parent to child while node values increase consecutively.

The follow-up allowed the path to extend in any direction and asked how the solution should change.

Practice: Longest Consecutive Path in a Binary Tree

The candidate confirmed in the comments that they implemented both coding questions and both follow-ups during the phone interview. The source does not clarify whether the tree-node type had to be defined.

Behavioral interview

Questions included:

1. A difficult customer or stakeholder
2. Simplifying a complex process or system
3. Making a mistake and fixing it
4. Learning a new technology quickly to finish a task
5. Disagreeing with a manager's decision
6. Going above and beyond for a customer

The source also contains a generic paragraph about possible onsite stages, but it does not preserve any concrete onsite question.