I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in May 2012
Interview
Google uses a unique interview system where candidates interview for a job, not a specific role and are assigned to random employees of the same roll. These interviews run from a script provided by hr.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The fact you are not interviewing for a specific role or with someone will work with makes these interviews very unproductive in my opinion. Questions are theoretical, attempting to gauge the intelligence of a candidate without a specific goal. I found this much less effective at judging a candidates match than a traditional interview.
I was asked what my favorite product was,
The process was straightforward and moved quickly. After applying online, a recruiter reached out within a few days for a brief phone screen. That was followed by two video interviews, one with the hiring manager and one with a panel of team members focused on project planning and stakeholder communication. The whole thing wrapped up in about two weeks, and the team was responsive and clear about next steps throughout.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I walked through a specific project where a key vendor delivery slipped. I explained how I flagged the risk early in our weekly status review, reset expectations with stakeholders, re-sequenced dependent tasks, and brought the timeline back within an acceptable range by negotiating a partial early delivery.
standard 1st round digital interview, they are asking about your experience, background, some behavioural questions and technical questions. and they also share a bit more about the role, culture and expectation
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.