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,
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.
