I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Oct 2013
Interview
I was contacted by a recruiter on Linked In. Phone interview 2 weeks later. Phone interviewer was clearly reading from a script and not very interested in genuine communication. Felt like I was talking to a robot. Interviewer acted very uninterested and self-important. More interested in asserting dominance than in exploring mutual opportunity.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Interviewer asked question, "How would you 'write a program' to do [X]?" (a very vague question), and become dissatisfied when I answered from an architecture standpoint. What he really wanted to ask was "How would you design an ALGORITHM to do [X]"?
Very self-driven, first of multiple rounds, where I had to take the initiative to arrive at the problem, constraints, approach, solutions, tradeoffs and reasoning behind it in a matter of 30 minutes.
You would have to do a hiring assessment first, then a recruiter screening follows. First round interview with the hiring manager. Majorly product sense and product improvement. The questions were not direct though.
Overall a lot of steps to the interview process. Talked to different people and had opportunities to ask questions. Many different stages which made it a lengthy process overall. Wasn't too bad.
