I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Jan 2018
Interview
Exactly as what others described here on glassdoor. Then, contacted by the recruiter, 1 phone interview, followed by all day multiple FTF interviews on site. Some of the interviewers are from other site and they called in remotely via video conferencing.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
exactly as people described: design, design, design, strategy, technical
2 rounds of phone screens, 45 minutes each; 1 use case in the first interview running for 45 minutes. 2nd interview had 3 use cases. Both the interviewers were friendly. I did not make it, and was surprised to know that I cannot apply for Product Manager positions for 12 months.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Google in Apr 2018
Interview
I applied via employee referral.
I was contacted by a recruiter a few days after submitting my application. We scheduled a first call, where I was walked through the entire process.
We then scheduled a first interview with a PM via hangouts (45 min).
After feedback from interviewer was reviewed, we moved ahead to schedule the on-site interviews.
Please note that while they aim to do 5 x on-site interviews face-to-face, in my case I did most of my interview via conference call from the Google office. Be prepared to perform well via conference call, and also be prepared for surprises, i.e. going in thinking you'll have a face to face interview only to find out it will be via video conference.
Feedback from all the interviews is gathered and submitted to a hiring commitee. The hiring commitee reviews and discusses each candidate's feedback and decides to make a hire recommendation or not.
In my case the feedback from my interviews was mixed. Some went really well, while in others I could have performed better.
Impressions:
* Google and its recruiters do an outstanding job at keeping the candidates informed at all times and provide constructive feeback.
* Some of the interviews can be really easy to navigate while others can be really hard. To some extent I believe this can be to the actual difficulty of certain questions or how hard an individual interviewer is probing, but also due to empathy (or the lack of) with the interviewer.
* Be as prepared as possible. Don't go unprepared. If you fail, Google expects you to wait for at least 12 months before applying again.
* For the on-site interviews, try to get as many interviews face-to-face as possible to increase your chances. Interviewing via video conference won't make it easier.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What's your favorite product and why? How would you improve it?