Google GCA Interviews (2025 Guide)

The GCA, or General Cognitive Ability interview, is an important interview round at Google.

GCA interviews assess how you solve problems by asking behavioral, hypothetical, or estimation questions.

What is the Google GCA interview?

GCA interviews are similar to behavioral interviews at other companies.

However, these questions evaluate how you think and solve problems rather than role-related knowledge or cultural fit.

Don’t be surprised if the questions you receive during this round are irrelevant to your role.

Often, these interview rounds take about one hour.

Google GCA interview questions are very open-ended and meant to give candidates significant leeway in answering.

Hiring Rubric

Google hires candidates who rank highly in these areas:

1. Experience. Do you have the experience, expertise, and knowledge to execute as a high performer at Google?
2. General Cognitive Ability (GCA): Learning quickly and adapting to unknown circumstances is key.
3. Leadership: Google wants to hire leaders. Because you'll work cross-functionally with different teams, you'll sometimes need to take a leadership role to get projects finished.
4. Culture Fit: Is Google right for you? Google wants candidates who can deal with ambiguity, jump to action, and work collaboratively across teams and departments.

In the case of GCA, there might be a dedicated round to test your skills in this area.

This will be in addition to dedicated behavioral, technical, and product rounds.

Behavioral Questions

Most GCA questions will be asked as behavioral-style interview questions.

Here are some examples of GCA behavioral questions:

1. Tell me about a time you handled a difficult stakeholder.
2. Tell me about a time when you worked on a project with a tight deadline.
3. How do you prioritize if you have to work on five different projects?
4. Tell me about a time you faced technical and people challenges simultaneously.
5. Tell me about a time when you handled conflict.
6. How do you sell an idea to senior management? For example, if you use slides, what would the content include?
7. Tell me about a time you had to convince engineers to implement a particular feature.
8. Tell me about a time when you decided based on data and were ultimately wrong.
9. Tell me about how you brought a product to market.
10. Tell me about when you had to motivate a team after a demoralizing event.

Hypothetical Questions

Some behavioral interview questions are about hypothetical scenarios rather than past behavior.

How will you act or react in a given situation?

Here are some examples of hypothetical questions:

1. You have a coworker who is not comfortable working on the team. What steps would you take to make the person more comfortable?
2. What would you do if you were introduced to new technology and never used it before? How would you know that you have learned it well?
3. Your team isn't innovating. What will you do to analyze the situation and make them innovate?
4. You have 12 months to deliver on a project. After six months, you released during a meeting that another team was working on the same project. What would you do?
5. How would you react when you find a product at a very high price in a drugstore?
6. How would you handle people who are not team players?
7. Imagine your manager strongly believed in something, and you did not. How would you manage the situation?
8. A developer is not testing the work. How would you deal with this?
9. What happens when a team member takes sick leave when your project has an upcoming deadline?
10. If a product's essential feature does not work on the day of the conference you are releasing it, what will you do?

How to Answer

Here's how to answer behavioral and hypothetical interview questions during Google's GCA rounds.

Interview Frameworks

You should not rely solely on interview frameworks to answer every question. However, they can be a valuable tool during the GCA round.

The triangle method and the STAR frameworks are best for the behavioral and hypothetical GCA interview questions.

The STAR Method

The STAR method is a way of answering these types of questions wholly but succinctly.

• Situation: Set the stage with context, such as impending investor meetings and recent coding setbacks. Illustrate the situation's complexity.
• Tasks: Clarify specific benchmarks or goals, such as a sales increase target. Define the task clearly.
• Actions: To navigate team disagreements, explore multiple options, consult with stakeholders, and emphasize empathy and understanding. Involve team leads and senior engineers in brainstorming. Demonstrate collaborative problem-solving and adaptability.
• Results: This resolution showcases the importance of empathy, effective communication, and team collaboration in achieving successful project outcomes.

The Triangle Method

The triangle method is a framework that consists of breaking your answer into (typically) three main sub-points.

You may find that this framework is a little more appropriate for answering hypothetical questions.

Story Bank

Creating a story bank is another way to prepare for the GCA behavioral questions.

This is a collection of stories, situations, or previous experiences that you can reference or repurpose during your actual interviews.

Estimation Questions

Google is notorious for asking difficult estimation questions. However, these questions have fallen out of fashion and are asked less frequently.

Also known as Fermi Problems, you may be asked these estimation questions during your GCA interviews.

• How many tennis balls would fit into a typical car?
• How many eggs are sold in the US per year?
• How many windows are in New York City?

Instead of general estimation problems, you'll likely hear Google-specific questions:

1. Estimate the number of videos watched on YouTube per day.
2. How much money does the Play Store make in a year?
3. How many quarters do you need to reach the height of the Empire State Building?
4. What is the market size for driverless cars in 2028?
5. Estimate the total online sales for fruits and vegetables per year in NYC.
6. Estimate Google Photos storage for Pixel phones.
7. Estimate the total internet bandwidth needed for a campus of 1000 graduate students.
8. What's the market size for Android in India?
9. Estimate the number of Gmail users in the US.

Interview Tips

Truthfully, the only truly effective way to prepare for this interview is to practice, practice, practice.

Review Google interview questions.

Review these recently asked Google interview questions reported by candidates.

We've sourced hundreds of different Google interview questions from members of our community for you to review before your GCA interview.

Practice mock interviews.

Try practicing mock interviews to help build your confidence ahead of time.

Exponent offers free daily peer-to-peer mock interview sessions. You can match with similarly skilled peers in behavioral and product management sessions.

Work with a Google interview coach.

One of the most effective ways to prepare for these questions is with Google interview coaching.

Exponent has partnered with several Google interview coaches who can give you an inside look into the company's hiring process while giving you expert advice on your potential interview performance.