The process was standard for what I had read about Google in the past. I was contacted by a recruiter who was my contact point during the process. He was professional and informative, and overall made the process enjoyable. I was set up with 3 phone interviews, and after the third, I was told that I did not have enough practical experience for the position. Honestly, that was probably correct, and they were courteous about telling me that.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Jan 2015
Interview
Prepping for a Google interview is time well spent. Especially for technical positions. Purchase and study the book "Cracking the Coding Interview" for several weeks prior to interviewing. Practice wipe boarding with your coding skills. Interview questions varied from complex to very simple. It is sometimes beneficial to provide a simple short answer and then ask if they would like a more extensive description.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Google in Jun 2015
Interview
I was in contact with a recruiter some months ago, before i finish my studies and she gave me -as i asked- time to finish and get prepared for the technical interview. Before i got the chance for this, she left Google and another recruiter contacted me later. We arranged a hangout where she talked to me about internship. I explained that i was now done and then she talked a bit generally about the role. The only technical question was about quicksort, to check if i remember these things. I answered, but i told her i needed some more time to refresh my memory and she said it was ok. She also asked what other projects i'm currently involved with. At the end of our conversation she said she would talk with her manager and contact me again. A few days later she sent me an email that we wouldn't go any further with the process. It was very disappointing as I was getting prepared for this for a month (since I graduated) and i really thought the technical interview was the decision point for moving on or not. Anyway, i believe she was new there and she was just looking to fill in internship positions, as she mentioned a specific project.
The previous recruiter gave me some good points of what i should know:
* Unix/ Linux systems internas (command lines, system calls, filesystems);
* Algorithms and data structures (sorting, lists, trees, hashes, etc best case - worst case/complexity)
* Networking (TCP/IP, OSI stack)
* Unix/ Linux systems administration (basics)