Googlers only want the best engineers. A tough, but positive interview experience. The recruitment process is a bit on the slow side, though recruiters always kept me well-informed. I had two phone interviews before being asked to come to Google Los Angeles. The interviews consisted of the standard Google questions that are mentioned elsewhere on this website. I made a fundamental mistake on the first interview, but was able to send a correction via email. The interviewers really want to help you. Before entering the building, applicants are required to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Even if I were to reveal what questions were asked, it wouldn't help. It's standard Computer Science algorithms and discrete math. You have to know your stuff and be able to explain yourself. Out of the six or so interviews, I totally botched one, becoming stuck. On another, I forgot an important conceptual detail. The rest went very well. I received notification that I was not selected a few weeks later. The recruiters and staff are all very friendly. The engineers' reputation for being really smart is well-earned. The interviews are tough, and if I couldn't get in ---being one of the top students in my CS program--- then it must be true that only the best of the best get in. The Google office is amazing, as is to be expected. I had a very positive impression of Google and their recruitment process. I appreciated being placed in a nice hotel and having all travel expenses paid. It was nice to get a short trip to LA. Anyone who is selected for an on-site interview already has a bright enough future so that she/he can find other offers of employment easily. From this website, it appears that most applicants who come on-site to interview do not get selected. However, anyone may apply again after six months. So if it is really important to work at Google, try, try again!

Direct onsite because I interviewed in the past and did well that time. From the time I sent my resume to interview day: 2 weeks. From interview day to offer over the phone: 2 weeks. The syllabus for the interviews is very clear and simple: 1) Dynamic Programming 2) Super recursion (permutation, combination,...2^n, m^n, n!...etc. type of program. (NP hard, NP programs) 3) Probability related programs 4) Graphs: BFS/DFS are usually enough 5) All basic data structures from Arrays/Lists to circular queues, BSTs, Hash tables, B-Trees, and Red-Black trees, and all basic algorithms like sorting, binary search, median,... 6) Problem solving ability at a level similar to TopCoder Division 1, 250 points. If you can consistently solve these, then you are almost sure to get in with 2-weeks brush up. 7) Review all old interview questions in Glassdoor to get a feel. If you can solve 95% of them at home (including coding them up quickly and testing them out in a debugger + editor setup), you are in good shape. 8) Practice coding--write often and write a lot. If you can think of a solution, you should be able to code it easily...without much thought. 9) Very good to have for design interview: distributed systems knowledge and practical experience. 10) Good understanding of basic discrete math, computer architecture, basic math. 11) Coursera courses and assignments give a lot of what you need to know. 12) Note that all the above except the first 2 are useful in "real life" programming too! Interview 1: Graph related question and super recursion Interview 2: Design discussion involving a distributed system with writes/reads going on at different sites in parallel. Interview 3: Array and Tree related questions Interview 4: Designing a simple class to do something. Not hard, but not easy either. You need to know basic data structures very well to consider different designs and trade-offs. Interview 5: Dynamic programming, Computer architecture and low level perf. enhancement question which requires knowledge of Trees, binary search, etc. At the end, I wasn't tired and rather enjoyed the discussions. I think the key was long term preparation and time spent doing topcoder for several years (on and off as I enjoy solving the problems). Conclusion: "It's not the best who win the race; it's the best prepared who win it."