The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Mar 2011
Interview
A Google technical recruiter found my resume on LinkedIn and asked if I were looking for new employment opportunities. After speaking with her and a second engineering recruiter about where I am living, what am I doing, etc., we set up a phone interview with an Optical Engineer in the group.
Within 30 seconds, she jumped right into asking technical details about my work and what I had done on a particular project. She proceeded to ask about my optical modelling experience, and how I would model certain problems within that project. She eventually asked textbook oriented questions about Young's double slit experiment, the difference between two radiometry terms, and how I would model the human eye in software.
I did not think I performed well on this interview but surprisingly got myself a second phone screening, but this time with a computer programmer. He asked me about my work (not the same projects as the first interviewer), how I would hypothetically deal with eye-tracking issues in mobile devices, and if I knew anything about diffractive optics. Since I did not, we were done. I felt good about how this interview went.
Both interviews went into the textbook and not-so-textbook oriented technical topics within 30 seconds. Both interviews lasted exactly 30 minutes with <5 minutes to ask my own questions.
Although I did not get rejected from Google, I am on hold and they may revisit my application within 6-12 months. Unfortunately, that does not help my job search for right now.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
What is the difference between luminance and illuminance?
What happens when you change the size of the slits in Young's double slit experiment? What happens if you move them closer or further apart? What happens if you have 3 or 5 slits instead of just 2 slits?