Colgate-Palmolive Software Engineer Interview Guide

I applied for an internship role at Colgate-Palmolive and went through a fairly streamlined interview process. The first stage was an online assessment focused on strings and parsing problems — nothing too advanced, maybe two LeetCode easy-level questions that tested basic problem-solving skills. I had about an hour to work through it, and the key was just thinking clearly about my approach rather than optimizing for speed.

After passing that, I moved into the technical interview round, which lasted roughly an hour. One moment that stood out was being asked to explain mergesort as if I were teaching it to someone unfamiliar with the algorithm — it was less about implementing it and more about clearly communicating the concept and walking through the logic. The interviewer also wanted me to discuss my thought process and identify areas where I could improve my solution, which felt less confrontational than a typical coding grind and more like a genuine technical discussion.

The behavioral round came next with a recruiter. We went through my background and resume, and they had me use the STAR method to structure my answers about past experiences. Nothing felt adversarial — they seemed genuinely interested in getting to know me and how I approached problems outside of pure algorithms.

What impressed me most was the flexibility. They were accommodating with my school schedule and other commitments, which made the whole process feel less like a gauntlet and more like they actually wanted to work with interns. The questions were straightforward, and as long as you've done some basic LeetCode prep, you shouldn't feel blindsided. The whole process felt designed to assess whether you can think through problems and communicate clearly rather than trip you up with obscure edge cases.