I had a very positive experience with two amazing recruiters. My journey to Google spanned almost two years.

A recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn in Seattle while I was at another position. We met on the Google campus, but I wasn't ready for a change.

Three or four months later, he offered me materials to help prepare for interviewing, should I be interested. Fast forward one year: I applied for a different role in Boulder, Colorado, and decided it wasn't for me.

The recruiter in Seattle noticed this and, outside of his responsibilities, called me out of the blue to see if there was anything else in Boulder that might interest me. He then handed me off to another recruiter in Boulder, who must be the nicest and most supportive recruiter I've ever met.

Amazingly fast, Google brought me onsite with four days' notice to keep pace with other interviews. I interviewed onsite and was informed of an offer approximately two and a half weeks later. Bringing me onsite with such short notice and skipping the phone screen because of my prior experience was a huge benefit.

The very small negatives:

• Like any Googler will tell you, the process is glacially slow. I was nail-biting for two weeks after my onsite before I was told that the hiring committee approved me.
• I ultimately put pressure on the process a bit with a competing offer.

I signed an NDA, so I can't mention anything specific.

The advice on Glassdoor is good: Study your algorithms, runtimes, data structures, and recursion.

I was surprised to find there were no "toy problems" or "trick questions": everything was very practical programming. As such, it was much easier than I was expecting.

As Google will tell you beforehand, there is also a design session, especially for senior engineers.

Your mileage may vary.