You must pass each step to proceed to the next.

#1: Phone screen by an internal recruiter - basic questions, validation of skill sets, nothing really detailed.

#2: Assigned a hiring "advocate" specific to the job area. In my instance, it was for Google Cloud. This person goes into a little more detail on your skills and asks questions about your work history. The goal is for this person to feel comfortable enough to submit your resume to an interview committee. This person will also guide you through each process, preparing you for interviews. It was quite helpful, considering the number of interviews you go through.

#3: You'll have three 45-minute video conference interviews, back to back, via Google Hangouts. The interviewers have a list of questions they can choose from, so it's hard to say what you'll be asked. Basically, it comes down to this:

A) Leadership Skills - they'll ask you how you handle team conflict, project management, etc. Essentially, a bunch of "what-if" questions.

B) Cognitive Skills - they'll throw out scenarios to measure your thought process on-the-fly. Apparently, a lot of people fail this interview, which is weird because it was a very easy interview for me. If you know how to problem-solve, you'll pass.

C) Technical Abilities: This depends on your focus, i.e., DevOps, Security, etc. They'll ask you tons of detailed questions, like explain how you would use Jenkins + Docker + Kubernetes and why you would use it. They'll keep going deeper and deeper until you can't answer anymore because it is so specific and may not even be in your field of expertise. I did very well about halfway through, then it got extremely difficult. Surprisingly, I passed. My advocate said I passed because they aren't trying to nail you on any given thing; they just want to see the breadth of knowledge you have and how you can apply that knowledge.

#4: If you get to this point, you'll be invited for an on-site, which is the final step. You'll also be given a list of "case studies," and you need to choose one, build it, and present it. Expect to spend about 30-40 hours on this. Fair warning, these case studies are extremely vague, so you just need to use your knowledge to fill in the gaps. Your advocate will answer any questions you have about the case study, but their answers are pretty vague too, so it wasn't much help.

#5: On-site.

Interview #1: Googlyness Interview. This is a "culture" fit interview, again "what-if" scenarios. I'm not sure why they even do this interview because it was pretty much the same type of questions as the cognitive and leadership interviews.

Interview #2: Case study presentation. You get 50 minutes to present your case. There will be 4 people in a role-playing fashion: CTO, CFO, Business Leader, and Engineer. They will try to derail you and see how you keep on point. They will ask you questions around your case study and challenge you on your solution. I walked out of there confident that I nailed that interview. Nope. My "advocate" called saying I passed everything with flying colors, except the case study. They felt I wasn't technical enough. It was frustrating that after all of these interviews, it came down to a case study that is extremely vague to begin with. I honestly don't know what they wanted to hear. This ended up being a complete waste of time for everyone, all because I didn't nail a "vague" case study by not being technical enough.

How do you manage competing priorities?