Contacted online by a recruiter from Google. Arranged an initial phone screen with the interviewer to discuss my level of interest/availability and suitability. I advised that I would not be in a position to move jobs for at least 5-6 months due to personal commitments. The recruiter said this was fine as we could schedule the interviews appropriately and that they wouldn't expect me to start in a set time after an offer being made - unlike other companies, I was able to state when I would be ready, no pestering me to start in 4 weeks or any of the normal antics!
I had one technical phone interview with an engineer, which was interesting and there weren't any gotcha's and after the questions I had a good opportunity to ask questions about the company, the role etc. I was very impressed with the honesty of the engineer and he was very pleasant and unlike with previous Facebook interviewers, he did not seem rushed or uninterested.
A few days later I was told that rather than have a 2nd phone interview, they would like to invite me over for the onsite interview in Dublin. The booking of the flight and hotel was very easy. Because of the personal commitments, I booked the interview for about a month after the phone interview. During that month, I was handed on to another recruiter who gave me a call and we talked about what I should expect during the interview day. Again, he was very pleasant, and I was surprised with how technically knowledgable he was for someone in recruitment.
Once I arrived in Dublin, I made my way to the hotel, which was easy to find and travel to from the airport. The hotel was nice and upon arrival they gave me details for free Wifi as I was "with Google".
The hotel was only a 10-15 minute walk from the Google offices, so it was nice and easy to get to with any worry of being late by unexpected transport issues.
The day consisted of 5 interviews, each 45 minutes IIRC. Each interview was 1:1 with an SRE engineer. I thought that the day would feel like it would never end and I would be on edge the whole time, but it was quite the opposite. Once I got over the initial jitters, the time flew by and I really enjoyed each interview. I had read quite a lot of reviews on the net where people had said the interviewers were unpleasant, uninterested and arrogant - so I was prepared for a fairly hostile environment. My experience was that again, every engineer was friendly, knowledgable, patient and honestly interested. I especially liked bouncing ideas off some off the guys and they didn't act like they knew it all. I also found that where there was some confusion, and I was pretty sure what I had said/written was correct, I was able to argue my case without feeling awkward and I never felt under pressure to give in for fear of rubbing them the wrong way.
The offices were great, although I didn't get the full tour as my first interview overran (we got carried away with the coding exercise) and it kind of put me behind all day as every interview was starting a little late. The free food in the restaurant was awesome.
It was approximately 2 weeks before I had an official offer, which I was happy with but had to wait a few more days for the details of the relocation package before I could accept.
Overall I really enjoyed myself.
