I applied through a recruiter. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Boston, MA) in Mar 2014
Interview
Simply put; horrible and insulting. 100% sure I will never want to work for google after the experience.
1. Phone interview setup for a management position; was cancelled twice due to no shows from google end.
2. Finally connected on third attempt; interview was aimed at junior college grads with very BASIC fundamentals from text books. Nothing to do with actual operations or production systems.
3. The beginning of the interview he put my on hold to go yell at people outside his office; but left phone on so I could hear; very unprofessional.
4. Mentioned to the interviewer this was for a technical management position; he told me we do not directly hire managers at GOOGLE; extremely arrogant reply. Huge communication problem from google's internal recruiter that seeked me out.
5. Clear early on that it was a in-experienced technical programmer that had no idea how to interview. All i could figure he was doing a stressor interview; typically you do NOT do this out of the gate?
Halfway through the interview I realized I didn't want to work there; ignored the follow-up requests.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1. Complexity... are you kidding me? Is this a college grad course?
Most questions will be based around data structure and algorithms; even though this have nothing to do with day to day job (I asked what a detailed typical day was during process)
2. DRBD and HA/heartbeat linux; interviewer was way outside of his depth and didn't fully understand clustering. Refrained from correcting him when he started down wrong path with questions.
3. write a script on the fly; type of questions. Again; nothing to do with actual operations.
make a script do this to a string of words
make a script do this to groups and users accounts on linux system
etc... On a live google hangout; no vim, no emacs... cannot use your function library you've built over the years; exactly how NO ONE programs anymore.
4. Not one troubleshooting question
5. Not a single Past action review question.
I applied through other source. I interviewed at Google (Dublin, Dublin) in Jul 2022
Interview
5 Interviews, each with a different focus point. Pleasant experience, interviewers were down to earth, respectful, clearly experts in their fields. Interviews were typically an hour each. Plenty of time was afforded for any questions the candidate (me) had.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
They asked me to solve a complex problem or at least to demonstrate how I would do it
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Google
Interview
Met with recruiter for 30 minutes, followed by a 60 minute leadership and a 60 minute code review interview. The recruiter never contacted me after the initial call and never even told me who I would be meeting with during my interviews. They have also ignored all follow up emails afterword. It’s now been 50 days since they last spoke to me
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 8 weeks. I interviewed at Google in Apr 2017
Interview
Firstly had a brief chat with recruitment team. Work experience, technical background with a quick quiz. Then the recruiter arranged two phone interviews four weeks later. One for technical, one for managing skills. For the technical phone screen, you will get a list of knowledge data points to prepare, such as data structures, algorithms, etc. A few days after the interviews I got a call from recruitment team that I didn't pass the first round.
