I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in May 2013
Interview
Referred in by a friend. Some informal preliminary interviews with members of team. Then in-house recruiter set up a day of 5 interviews on-site in Mountain View (some were with remote members of team via teleconference).
One thing I noticed about the interviews was that they asked questions and just let me do most of the talking. Was much more them collecting information from me and my answers than conversational.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
No questions were really that difficult. Most were just open-ended questions to see how I think through products, markets, analytic skills, market sizing and opportunity. They are looking for race-horses, not specific industry depth. The philosophy is that their PM's should be strong enough to PM for any product internally to Google, and the interview stayed very true to that.
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.