I was initially contacted by a recruiter via email. I replied and we set up a phone call. The recruiter was pushing me towards a Software Engineer in Test role, even though that's not what I currently do - in hindsight I think that was probably a major reason why I didn't get an offer.
Throughout the recruitment experience I kept getting handed off from one recruiter to the next - I think in total there were 5 different people I had to deal with before the interview. It all seemed very disorganized.
One of the recruiters set up a phone screen with an engineer which I passed without issues - there weren't really any challenging questions.
For the onsite interview they were trying to make me travel to Mountain View but I wasn't interested in that so they eventually set up an interview in Seattle for me. The interview was a whole day, I think it was 5 or 6 technical interviews each lasting 45 minutes, and a lunch break with an employee who they claim doesn't submit any feedback. When I first arrived there in the morning the receptionist had a list of people interviewing that day but I wasn't on that list - further disorganization. She eventually worked out who was supposed to meet me.
After the interview I didn't receive any communication from Google for 2 weeks so I decided to email one of the many recruiters and ask if there was any updated. They told me the engineers were busy with peer reviews at the moment so not all feedback was in yet. Another 2.5 weeks went by and I finally got an email that the recruiter wanted to set up a phone call. He called me the next day to inform me that I hadn't passed the interview which I was quite surprised by.
