I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Seattle, WA) in Sep 2010
Interview
Google contacted me and told me that they were looking for developers in the Bay Area and New York City. Their internal recruiter set up an interview with one of their developers.
The interview was on the phone, as well as via a google docs. The interviewer did not know how to start the interview, so I asked "do you want me to tell you about projects I am currently working?" He said that was a good idea, but I could tell he was not listening because he was eating. I'm serious. Turns out he was 23 years old, and it was obvious he did not want to be doing the interview.
He asked a couple of puzzle-type coding questions, which I kind of flubbed, but I talked through the problems and data-structures. I didn't find the cute coding "trick" he was looking for obviously and told me I should interview for a tester position -- because Google is looking for "hard-core" programmers.
While I've been writing software for over 17 years, I have never tested software -- but he didn't know that because, well, he never looked at my resume.
I thanked him for his time, and asked him what product he worked on: Google Chat.I do not think that product exists anymore.
Overall: Unprofessional, rude, condescending, slightly humiliating, irritating.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
It was unexpected that he didn't actually ask any real questions --they just want puzzle-solvers.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Google
Interview
A recruiter from Google's college recruiting team contacted me after my friend referred me. The process was very fast. I had a phone interview with an engineer from Google's NYC office two weeks later. It was a standard 45-minute technical interview. The interviewer started the interview with a coding problem directly. BTW, we used Google docs as the white board. I finished the first coding problem with two solutions and he verified both of them. But we didn't leave much time for the second problem, I wrote down some code and the time was up. One week later, I got the onsite invitation. The onsite interview included four sessions. All of them were technical interviews. Almost two weeks after the onsite interviews, I got a call from my recruiter, she gave a bad news :(
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Most of questions are not simple, because you need to think thoroughly.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Google (New York, NY) in Nov 2013
Interview
Got the interview by employee inferral, waited about 1 week. Two telephone 45-minitute interviews same day. I wasn't well prepared and didn't get the offer.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given 2 strings, one is to be sorted, the other is the order. For example, first one is "hello", the second one is "loade", then the sorting result is "lloeh".