I actually interviewed for two different positions at Google with very different experiences. Both times it was a referral from a Googler who I had met socially and got interested by my background and skills.
One set of interviews was for a management position. After the HR screening I went onsite for an afternoon of interviews. 6 total. This was pretty exhausting but I enjoyed very much the discussions, all questions were situational and directly related to the position. Good experience overall.
The second time was for the PM position. (my current role is director of PM). After the HR screening I got an interview with a PM who arrived 20 minutes late and it did not go well from the get go. I was interviewing for a position in the enterprise business part of Google. Enterprise software is my background. The interviewer was a pure consumer software guy.
There was just too much of a disconnect. I could not handle questions about the market size of wearable devices and he could not answer my questions about the competitive landscape between Google and Amazon in the enterprise business.
Pure waste of time for both of us.
Google is a very successful company so obviously their process works. But I know they struggle in the enterprise space and I understand better why.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How would you design a scalable system that can stream youtube video to Google glass provided the screen resolution is X.
The process was straightforward and moved quickly. After applying online, a recruiter reached out within a few days for a brief phone screen. That was followed by two video interviews, one with the hiring manager and one with a panel of team members focused on project planning and stakeholder communication. The whole thing wrapped up in about two weeks, and the team was responsive and clear about next steps throughout.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I walked through a specific project where a key vendor delivery slipped. I explained how I flagged the risk early in our weekly status review, reset expectations with stakeholders, re-sequenced dependent tasks, and brought the timeline back within an acceptable range by negotiating a partial early delivery.
standard 1st round digital interview, they are asking about your experience, background, some behavioural questions and technical questions. and they also share a bit more about the role, culture and expectation
Very self-driven, first of multiple rounds, where I had to take the initiative to arrive at the problem, constraints, approach, solutions, tradeoffs and reasoning behind it in a matter of 30 minutes.