I applied through an employee referral. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at RAND (Santa Monica, CA) in Sept 2008
Interview
Had interviews with HR, several peers, some senior associates and the hiring manager who is a part-time manager-part time researcher. Also gave a 1 hr presentation on my research to anyone at any RAND office who wished to attend. Fielded questions from the audience--mostly about methods.
Everyone who interviews you or attends your presentation can write a review of you and make a hiring recommendation. The hiring manager pools all of these reviews and tries to see whether people who have funded projects might need someone with your expertise in the coming year. These people have to commit to using you for the first year.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Most of the difficult questions were methods questions about my presentation--so those are easy to prepare answers. Some of the harder questions were challenges from the presentation audience on my findings because they found something different to be true.