I applied for the job on Google Jobs, it is a particular niche field. I received an email from a Google recruiter, followed by a phone interview with the recruiter, then a couple of days later a phone interview with the hiring manager, then a week or so later a phone interview with someone else on the team. This individual could not speak English well enough for me to understand him. Afterward I contacted the recruiter for feedback and they promised to get back to me, but I never heard from them again. All the interview questions were pertinent to the specific position, no trick questions whatsoever. It would have been sporting to have gotten a call or email from the recruiter.

I have a PhD from an ivy league school, speak four languages fluently, have a fairly substantial list of publications, and have lived and traveled throughout the world. A twenty-something in Google's HR who had some sort of humanities undergraduate degree, with gum in her mouth, idly looked over my resume and said "Wellllll -- you do have all this education and pretty great work experience -- but it's not like you're an *astronaut* or anything." Sure, they have heated toilet seats and you can bring your dog to work, blah blah blah, but if that chick in HR was not an outlier, Google seems to have jumped the shark.