I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Google
Interview
Applied online before Christmas, didn't expect to hear back at all, but in late January got an email and 2 45-minute technical interviews over the phone were scheduled. A couple of days before the first interview, I contacted the recruiter as I wasn't confident I have had enough time to prepare. My interview was pushed back a week, which was extremely nice of Google.
In the first inverview, I was asked to code a very basic, well-known algorithm but the interviewer did not specify that in the question, it was more like 'how would you do this?'-type question. Then I was asked to walk through a sample input and explain how the algorithm would execute. Finally I was asked how I would adequately test the algorithm. Second question involved coming up with a solution to a problem involving 2 integer arrays. No coding was required, just an explaination of how I would go about it.
Second interviewer had me explain some object-oriented concepts, even though I chose to answer in C. There were some ambigious questions about the Google search engine and the Google servers, which I'm pretty sure I did not answer correctly. Then I was asked to write an encryption function, and once I managed to complete it, the problem was made more difficult a couple of times and for each I had to rewrite the code to suit the problem.
Overall, I thought the interviews were not as hard as I thought they would be, and both of the interviewers were quite nice and patient, explaining concepts I did not understand, or helping me find the right solution. At the end of each interview I had some time to just chat with them, and ask questions, which I thought was great.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Google in Oct 2011
Interview
Contacted by an recruiter through email and scheduled an onsite interview
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
One question is regarding coding skills and one is regarding algorithm design. The later one is about graph and is difficult. Didn't figure out the solution myself. The interviewer is nice and offered lots of hints.