What is the hiring process in Google? How do I get an internship at Google?

What is the hiring process in Google?

I’m going to assume that we are talking about a software engineering position.
The phases of the recruiting process are, broadly, these:
  1. Sourcing
    1. There are several kinds of sourcing. When a recruiter reaches out to you directly, that’s called passive sourcing (because from the recruiter’s point of view you were passive before being contacted). Active sourcing includes university recruiting, referrals, and “over the transom” applications via the jobs page.
    2. At the end of this phase the recruiter has a contact who has expressed some interest in being a candidate for a position.
  2. Phone screen
    1. The phone screen involves having a Google engineer conduct a 45 minute interview over phone or Skype with the candidate. This will typically involve some q&a plus some sort of problem solving activity.
    2. At the end of this phase the recruiter will have a writeup of the interview by the interviewer. This writeup will include the interviewer’s assessment of whether to proceed to an onsite interview along with the specific details of questions asked and answers given.
  3. Onsite interview
    1. In this phase the interviewee is invited onsite to speak with four or five engineers. Each will spend 45 minutes with the candidate and then prepare an interview report that includes questions and answers as well as assessments of those answers and an overall score.
    2. At the end of this phase the recruiter will have five or six interview reports.
  4. Hiring Committee
    1. The hiring committee reviews the resume, the interview reports, and sometimes interview results with the candidate’s references.
    2. At the end of this phase the recruiter will have a hire/no-hire recommendation and an overall score. These are like academic grades, ranging from A+ to B-, generally.
  5. Higher level review
    1. A regional committee made up of directors and VPs reviews the hire recommendations by several hiring committees. The review committee may adjust the score or, in rare cases, overturn the recommendation entirely. The higher level committee also reviews the recruiters’ recommendations on leveling (what title in the engineering title ladder) and compensation.
    2. At the end of this phase the recruiter will have a confirmed offer proposal that includes title and compensation.
  6. Team match
    1. The recruiter reviews available candidates at the confirmed offer stage with managers with openings in their teams. These managers review all of the documentation, including the commentary from the HC and the higher level committee. This can sometimes be contentious, particularly for the higher-scored candidates.
    2. Team match typically takes place concurrently with the higher level review, though it may run on after it is complete.
    3. At the end of this phase there is a complete package - interview details, title, compensation, and destination team.
  7. Offer
    1. At this stage the offer is given a final review by an SVP in Mountain View and the offer letter is signed and transmitted to the candidate.
From there on out it’s up to the candidate to accept the offer, of course.

Answer is given by quora.com expert Sam Hansen

How do I get an internship at Google? 
Oh, there are a ton of ways. 

1. Apply online and have a better resume than the supposedly 2,000,000 people who also applied.  ( Cracking Into Google: More Than 2 Million People Apply Each Year ) ( edit: that 2M figure is most likely all job applications not just internships )
2. Go to a school that Google recruits from ( your best bet is Stanford, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, ULA, MIT  The Schools Where Apple, Google, and Facebook Get Their Recruits ) 
3. Go work at a company that Google hires a lot from. ( Google really likes Microsoft employees Charted: Where Google, Facebook, and Tesla like to poach from) 
4. If your school has a Google Student Ambassador (GSA), apply for the program, get in, meet a recruiter, and ask for an interview. ( Google for Education: Student Ambassador Program ) 
5. Go to hackathons Google attends, and impress the googler on site enough to get a recommendation.  ( Page on hackalist.org )
6. Get an internal recommendation. ( A good trick here is to use Facebook graph search and query for "friends and friends of friends that work at Google". For the love of all things holy, please don't be a pest and just ask random people you don't know for recommendations ) 
7. Have an awesome linkedin that gets you noticed. 
8. Have a friend that gets contacted by a google recruiter and ask them to recommend you when the recruiter asks if they know anyone that would be a good fit to interview with Google. 

BONUS : This one is my personal favorite.
9.  Realize you go to a school that Google doesn't recruit from,  go to hackathons at other schools to try to meet a recruiter, realize your resume isn't good enough to grab their attention, build up your resume, realize you still can't get through the online filter, try to apply to be a GSA so you can meet a recruiter, find out you need a recommendation from a previous GSA, realize your school has never had a previous GSA, fly to pennsylvania to meet a GSA from another school ( shout out to Eden Shapiro), convince them to recommend you, get recommended and finally apply, become a GSA, fly out to the Googleplex for training, meet a recruiter, tell the recruiter you have a upcoming offer deadline at their favorite competitor, ask for an interview, have an interview two days later, get internship. 

It's as easy as that!
Getting the Interview
The thing that amazes me is people think there is a sure-fire way to get an interview. You can either have a 4.0, or start a successful company, or have a ton of internal references, but it really doesn't work like that. The first thing to realize is why recruiters exist. Their job is to find as many candidates that they think can make it through the hiring process as possible. When the candidate is successful, the recruiter is successful.
Recruiters analyze everything. They know what traits correlate with a successful candidate and which ones don't. To help them, they score each of the potential candidates ( either formally or informally ) and pick the candidates that end up with the highest score.
So what does that scoring look like?
Here is an example of the scoring card Microsoft is using right now to score their potential candidates. I imagine Google recruiters look for similar things:
1 Point for each:
  • CS/EECS/ECE/EE/MISM/IS or closely related major
  • Grad date after June 2017
2 points for each:
  • Grad date on or before June 2017
  • Active in tech related student org
  • Previous or current (Summer 2015) technical internship/full-time employment with any company
  • Hackathon/computing competition involvement
  • GPA above 3.6
  • TA
3 points for each:
  • Previous or current (Summer 2015) technical internship/full-time employment with top tech company (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Palantir, IBM, etc.)
  • Leader in tech related student org
  • Startup founder
Of course, they look at a number of other things, but this should give you a pretty solid understanding of how to build your resume to get past the interview wall.
So let's say you build up the perfect resume, and you still can't get through the interview wall. Don't stress too much, there are a number of other routes you can try.
____________
Getting Past The Interview
Instead of regurgitating the stuff that's been said a hundred times let me link you to some of my favorite resources:
Some thoughts from me
  • I've gone through all of the above resources cover to cover, I honestly wouldn't have gotten an internship at Google if I hadn't. I realize it's a lot. It's going to take dedication and persistence to make it through everything.
  • Please don't wait until you have the interview to start preparing. You won't have enough time.
  • Make sure you surround yourself with brilliant people, it keeps you motivated and humble. The worst thing you can do is delude yourself into thinking you know everything.
  • Prioritize what you're learning. Guess what you think is the most important and learn that first. Re-prioritize as you learn more, do more interviews, and get more information.
  • Your goal is not to learn everything, it's to fill as many holes as possible. If you fill enough holes you'll make it through the process.
  • Make sure you practice interviewing over a phone / whiteboard before your interview. It's completely different from answering questions on your own.
_____________
I wish I could say there was a magic formula for getting an internship at Google, or any big tech company for that matter, but at the end of the day it just requires a lot of hard work and persistence.
Answer is given by Quora.com expert Austin c Wells

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