I applied through a recruiter. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Sept 2012
Interview
Summary: You had better know the technology inside & out - at a much greater level of detail than a Project Manager would ever need. Basically they are looking for Engineers who want to give Project Management a shot.
Details: I was contacted by a recruiter at Google about an opportunity with the company. Went through a couple phone screen type calls with him before moving onto the next step which was a phone interview with another Project Manager. This phone interview lasted 45 mins & did not discuss anything about project management, it was only technical questions. I passed that interview (but was skeptical about the job really being "Project Management") and was asked to fly out to Mountain View for 5 hours of face to face interviews.
The vast majority of the questions through the face to face interviews were technical just like the original phone interview- not really concerned about Project Management skillsets. Again, very bizarre considering that the title of the position was Project Manager (albeit a Technical Project Manager but still). I would say that 95% of all questions I received were technical with the other 5% being general management type questions (not a single question that was pure project management).
Google really does only care about your technical skill sets even for project managers - but who am I to argue with them, they are taking over the world. :) That being said I made it perfectly clear in my phone interview that my technical skill sets are my weakest, yet they moved forward with the interview. If technical skills were 95% of the job requirements they should have been able to weed me out a lot earlier in the process (before having to travel for face to face interviews).
After 1.5 weeks I received a "Dear John" call from the recruiter saying that there just wasn't a fit. I was completely fine with this because there was very little they could have done to convince me to take the job after the interview questioning I went through. I knew it wasn't a fit for either of us.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Basically explaining how the technology works down to a really detailed level.
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.