I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Google (New York, NY) in Feb 2013
Interview
The process was very smooth but I felt the interview was a bit unfair. The question was somewhat new and I could get no where near to cracking it in 15-20 min. It was about some left closed right intervals something (don't remember the exact details) but knew it was some interval tree question. I have seen people get much easier questions in their first round interview. I guess these interviews tend to get random and I was just plain unlucky to have got a very difficult (and unforgiving) interviewer right at the very beginning.
I applied through college or university. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Feb 2013
Interview
Was contacted through career fair for a phone interview. Had to code on Google Doc which was in sync. The problem was pretty straightforward, but the main thing the interviewer was looking for was how I would design the data structures required and how I would approach the problem.
Even while answering, I knew I wasn't doing well, out of nervousness etc.
The interviewer wasn't particularly friendly...That didn't help either.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How would you ensure a server is working properly?
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Cambridge, MA) in Nov 2012
Interview
I was contacted by a recruiter from Google over a year ago when I wasn't in the job market. This year, when I entered the job market, I got back in touch with him, and he set things up for me.
Since I work right next to the Google office in Cambridge, they skipped phone interviews and I was invited for an onsite interview directly. There were five technical interviews that covered coding, algorithm design and analysis, software design, and system design
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
My most difficult question was on system design. I have been in academia until now, and so thinking about enterprise-style system-design and scalability issues was very difficult for me.