The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Groupon in May 2010
Interview
I had a phone interview with a recruiter and then was invited to come in. A couple weeks later I came in and spoke with a recruiter, HR director, Sales manager, and another recruiter. It felt overall positive and I was complimented by the sales manager multiple times.
And here's the weird part:
I never heard back. At all. Multiple e-mails, checking their job site for my status (still pending), and nothing. Ever. Based on this alone, I would never apply for another job at Groupon. I think it is incredibly unprofessional to not let a candidate know one way or the other, especially for such a large company. Only in the last few weeks, 7 months later, my status was changed to declined (surely because they were just updating their database). Perhaps the billion dollars of funding will help them be on top of their hiring process.
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Groupon (Chicago, IL) in Apr 2010
Interview
Similar experience to most..phone interview with a friendly recruiter, then 1:1 interview with multiple people in-office. Sensed a lot of disorganization but still seems like a relatively fun place to be. Most people were very friendly and helpful. The problem was one of the interviewers, an HR guy named Dan. Must be the "expressionless" guy. Came in and immediately had a negative approach, no answers seemed good enough and criticized every answer I gave, would cut me off in the middle of an answer to tell me I didn't sound sincere. Seemed to be on a huge power trip. Hands down the worst interviewer I have ever experienced, and felt my time was wasted by talking with him. Other than that, I had a positive experience with the other people at groupon.
I applied through other source. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Groupon (Chicago, IL) in Jan 2010
Interview
My initial contact with the company was great; I spoke with a recruiter on the phone and she was very friendly and easy to talk to.
My in person interview was rather nerve-racking. It took a couple hours most of which was spent waiting in a room. I met with four different people, probably for about 10 minutes each, and then waited maybe 20-25 minutes in between people.
For the most part they all asked the same questions, which really made all my waiting seem like a waste of time when we could have all met at once. The only upside was that I had the ability to be prepared and improve my answer each round. The main recruiter never seemed satisfied with any of my answers. He kept asking me to explain why I wanted to work for Groupon and when I explained what I liked about the company it didn't seem good enough. Also, they asked a lot of situation questions (tell me about a time when...) which I never find easy to answer, or particularly useful for the interviewer.