The process took 7 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Jan 2010
Interview
The interviewer was 15 min late for the interview.
The same thing happened in my first interview with Google (this is round 2 questions I am sharing).
It started off with
a) Tell me about yourself
b) How much money does Facebook make
c) Design an elevator for a building (no specifics on what kind of building). Follow up design with two elevators and etc.
I didn't get the job because I think I messed up in question b. I could only think of one way Facebook generates revenue (advertising), I forgot about the cutesy hearts and stuff you can buy as another source of revenue. But I couldn't figure out how to come up with how much they make per year accept rambled on how much each customer would pay and depended on number of page impressions, size, format and frequency of add displayed and to get the total...I mentioned that I know how much reported net worth of Owner of FB is so it has to be x much more to cover cost of IT, resource, etc.
I have been interviewed by Google, Apple and Microsoft and to compare all of the interviews I have to say Google's was the least structured. It almost felt like they came up with a question but did not come prepared on who the customer base (question c) which is highly important for a PM to know...
I applied through college or university. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Oct 2009
Interview
Initial screening interview. Got it because I was an intern at Google before. First asked about my experiences and why I wanted the PM position. Then came the harder questions. Asked me if I had any questions at the end. They are hiring very few APMs and more SDEs this year. If you make it past the 2 phone interviews, you'll get a day of on site interview.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Asked me to estimate the revenue of various free web services from Google and competitors.
I applied through college or university. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Google in Oct 2009
Interview
Being my second job interview ever, I did plenty of research beforehand on the kind of questions I would be asked for an Associate Product Manager position. I learned that Google expects their APMs to have a blend of technical saavy mixed with business knowledge. Thus, I studied both algorithms and considered some common types of business design questions.
As it turned out, my interview turned out to be entirely about the business side of things and putting me in the role of a real world product manager. I highly enjoyed this approach because it really allowed my creativity to flex itself with unconventional answers. I imagine future interviews may include more tests of technical capabilities, but the first interview begins with personal questions followed by strict role-playing.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What website do you visit the most and what would you do as PM for that website?