I applied online and few weeks later, got an email from the recruiter. and scheduled an interview via email. talked 30 minutes with a user experience designer at google, asked me about my design process, portfolio, previous experience and did some design exercise. didn't make it to the next step
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA)
Interview
I was approached via email by one of their recruiters, who asked me to submit my name for a position on their UX team. I was never sent a description of a job. This has happened twice in the past 3 years. In the first instance, I only spoke with a recruiter who "shopped" my resume around to teams to see if they thought there was a fit. There wasn't. The second time I got through to someone on their UX team. He asked me questions about my work and my portfolio, and he described the workplace at Google. The recruiter called me about 2-3 days later to ask how I thought the interview went; I thought it went well. I was actually pretty surprised and devastatingly disappointed when the recruiter told me that I wasn't right for Google. I didn't get any feedback about what they didn't like.
I have to rate this as a pretty negative experience on Google's part. It's incredibly rude to ask someone to interview for a position where pre-screening hasn't already taken place. In my experience, if an in-house recruiter contacts me, it's because someone has already chosen a subset of candidates. To me, this is like being personally invited to a party, and then being rejected by the bouncer.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
What's the difference between information architecture and user experience?
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Google (New York, NY) in Jun 2012
Interview
portfolio review, then phone screen, home exercise, and onsite interviews including a presentation. The presentation is in the morning to the full panel of people interviewing later, so this is your chance to impress people. In the presentation you will be covering your home assignment, and 2 other projects from your portfolio.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a doll exchange app. I had to whiteboard the screens and flows, answering questions like "How will the homepage look like" and what's the checkout flow.