I applied online. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Google (Sydney) in Jul 2014
Interview
Applied on Google website in March 2014. Got an email from a recruiter in June asking to set up a date for a technical phone interview with an Engineer. Managed to set a date for the interview about one month later. The interview lasted around 45 min and was very Technical. Got a reply a week later that they will not proceed to the next stage. Recruiter didn't give any specific information about the nature of the interview and didn't mention any specific areas to focus on. Everything was a bit vague and I spent nearly a month studying everything - Data structures, Algorithms, Coding, Systems, Networking etc.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What happens in Linux Shell when trying to run ls command, Describe TCP protocol, how is TCP different from UDP and when to use each one, DNS uses UDP or TCP protocol, What is the size of UDP packet, Describe what is a struct, enum and union in C, describe the memory structure on the operating system (heap,data and stack)
Typical interview process. Started with a recruiter and then had a phone screen with someone in a product team. That was followed a couple of weeks later with an on-site interview. The interview process was long and tiring. It is a full day of meetings where they want to know two things. 1) do you know your stuff technically. 2) do you think and communicate logically.