I have interviewed with Google before and I'm currently going through the process of getting an internship with them. Let me tell you I've had very disparate and different experiences in these months.
I was contacted exactly one year ago for a fulltime position and my contact/recruiter was really excellent, very friendly, helpful and informal, we also talked a lot about non-Google related stuff, a definite great guy. Then I was moved to onsite interviews and I failed.
Fast forward to last October, I was contacted for an internship, I said I was interested and the recruiter said my application was forwarded. I never heard from them again (even after pinging the guy again). Then I talked to an engineer at Google and I was told that since I had already done the required interviews with them a year before (I failed for fulltime but they apparently qualified me for internship), I didn't have to do them again so the process should have been faster.
With that in mind I managed to get in touch with another recruiter and explained my situation, she decided to give me a chance and we had a phone screening (although it shouldn't have been necessary, but no big deal). After that she told me I'd have to go through all the interviews again although that's not what I was told. She passed on my application and nobody contacted me again.
That was beginning of January. I pinged her a few weeks ago and luckily I was told that my application had been magically forwarded to another recruiter again (aka she forgot, probably). This time I was told that I qualified to skip the interviews so now I'm at a later stage (project matching for internship) so I can't complain, although I was told there's not much choice because I am "applying late" even though it's been going since October.
Tl;dr - it really depends on the recruiter, it's a shame because that can really reflect negatively on the whole company.
I was contacted exactly one year ago for a fulltime position and my contact/recruiter was really excellent, very friendly, helpful and informal, we also talked a lot about non-Google related stuff, a definite great guy. Then I was moved to onsite interviews and I failed.
Fast forward to last October, I was contacted for an internship, I said I was interested and the recruiter said my application was forwarded. I never heard from them again (even after pinging the guy again). Then I talked to an engineer at Google and I was told that since I had already done the required interviews with them a year before (I failed for fulltime but they apparently qualified me for internship), I didn't have to do them again so the process should have been faster.
With that in mind I managed to get in touch with another recruiter and explained my situation, she decided to give me a chance and we had a phone screening (although it shouldn't have been necessary, but no big deal). After that she told me I'd have to go through all the interviews again although that's not what I was told. She passed on my application and nobody contacted me again.
That was beginning of January. I pinged her a few weeks ago and luckily I was told that my application had been magically forwarded to another recruiter again (aka she forgot, probably). This time I was told that I qualified to skip the interviews so now I'm at a later stage (project matching for internship) so I can't complain, although I was told there's not much choice because I am "applying late" even though it's been going since October.
Tl;dr - it really depends on the recruiter, it's a shame because that can really reflect negatively on the whole company.
Ps: sorry for the lengthy post, I needed to vent