I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Jan 2011
Interview
I applied to a Product Manager position at Google online. About 2/3 weeks later, the HR contacted me via email I was selected as a candidate. The HR sent a list of information for me to prepare for the interview, including the job description, tips on things to know, and type of interview questions expected. I was also asked to answer some questions briefly such as what's my favorite google product, preferred location etc. It was right before the Christmas holiday so the interview was scheduled about a week after the new year. I had the luxury of the entire two weeks to prepare for it.
It was a 45 minute phone interview with one of the product manager. I found it a bit hard to interact with somebody over the phone especially when answering about product design questions, because I cannot observe the reaction of the other end.
It was a good experience overall. The last question was about algorithm and run time. It was actually quite simple when I thought about it afterward, but at the time, I wasn't being very smart about it. I had a computer engineering degree, but have not done programming in years. Also, this was the first interview I had in couple of years. So I felt a bit rusty, especially answering the technical question.
To prepare, I read a lot of technical interview examples and followed the Google product news and user feedback for a while to get familiar.
assuming you are the owner of a user review website, such as Yelp. How do you design a button that returns a list of recommended restaurants that you like.
you are on a biz trip and travelling from one city to another. you have a stack of unsorted flight boarding passes. only departure city and destination city are on the boarding pass. how do you find the first departure city and your final destination city
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.