I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Zürich) in Jul 2017
Interview
The HR recruiter first briefs you on the role and answers your questions and explains the process. You get a remote video 1:1 interview to see if there is potential to go to the next round. If you are approved, they fly you out to one of the main recruiting offices (in my case, I had the choice between Zurich and London). You are flown, boarded and asked to keep receipts to be reimbursed for eating and travel expenses. You are asked to prepare a couple of case studies to present to the people who will be interviewing you, some of them in the office, some remote. They set up also a more relaxing, unofficial lunch with someone from the team so you can ask all the questions you want. I feel like the interviewers are briefed not to smile or nod, so you speak to some stone-cold-faced people. They asked about methods used. After I've gone home, the recruiter calls to give feedback to say what went well and didn't. I think they make the experience as smooth as possible. But they definitely take the position that they are interviewing YOU for the job, and not that you're interviewing them as a company, which I find off-putting. Particularly since they asked me to apply.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Name an app you use often. How would you improve it?
What methods do you use?
It's been a while, I can't remember others.
Pretty straight forward when you go through a vendor/ agency. Will ask you to demonstrate a project you’ve worked on and give an overview of your research skills. Everyone is really friendly and encouraging
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Can you talk us through a project you’ve worked on in the past?
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Austin, TX) in Feb 2022
Interview
4 individual interviews via Google Meet, 1 with a hiring manager, 2 with current user researchers, and 1 with head of division. Everyone was very engaging, kind, and transparent. Scheduling happened quickly.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me a time…
How do you collaborate with others…
Why this job?
How do you evaluate success of…
The interview was over the phone and involved a recruiter reaching out to see if my skill set matched any of their open positions at the time. If they had a good match they were going to put me in contact with specific managers for additional phone conversations
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Do you have experience analyzing qualitative data?
User Researcher applicants have rated the interview process at Google with 3.9 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 71% positive. To compare, the company-average is 61.5% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for User Researcher roles take an average of 77 days to get hired, when considering 7 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Google overall takes an average of 38 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Google as a User Researcher according to 7 Glassdoor interviews include:
One on one interview: 24%
Group panel interview: 20%
Phone interview: 20%
Presentation: 12%
Skills test: 12%
Background check: 8%
IQ intelligence test: 4%
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