I was recruited, so my process went as follows: Recruiter email Recruiter phone call Portfolio screen among designer at Google Phone call with a designer Design challenge Onsite Hiring Committee/Team Match The entire process lasted 4 months, and it was a tremendous amount of work for me to participate in. The design challenge is fairly time consuming, and preparing to present your portfolio, and general prep for your interviews is like taking on a second full time job. The onsite was okay, but one thing that that bothered me about the experience was the stony-faced attitude of almost every interviewer. It's a bizarre experience, and it felt like I was interacting with very unhappy or apathetic people. I know Google encourages their interviewers to do this because it's supposed to help keep the interview professional, but it makes it incredibly impersonal. It also makes Google seem like a worse place to work than it probably is. I think in a few years Google will realize that this practice does more harm than good - like the ridiculous 'gotcha' questions they used to ask. But I digress. The worst thing about my experience with the Google interview was one particular interviewing who made a comment that people at Google are of *much* higher intellect than the average person, and so creating tools for Googlers was much more challenging than designing products for consumers (Gross). Big takeaway: It's a ton of work to go through this process, though it is kind of fun to throw yourself into the gauntlet and see how far you can make it. If you want a role at Google, you need to ace your onsite so that you have multiple team matches and can be more selective about which team you join.