Internal referral via email, no resume.

• Recruiter contact.
• Submit resume and go over basic questions on interests and experience. Schedule technical phone interview.
• Phone interview.
• One week later, I inquire via email whether I passed. Receive follow-up immediately that they would like to schedule an onsite interview.
• Transferred to a different recruiter. Submit a full application with more details.
• Onsite: three interviews, lunch, two more interviews.
• One week later, receive news that I passed the interviews and the first hiring committee.
• Submit references.
• Passed more committees and moved to team matching.
• Contact with the actual manager, come to mutual agreement.
• Offer.

Notes on the Interview Process:

Take your time; don't be afraid to ask for a later interview date to study up. I reviewed Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell. It's a good book for reviewing basic concepts. While no questions I received came directly from the book, it served as excellent mental preparation for the types of problems you'll encounter.

Also, try Topcoder to practice coding if you're out of practice writing actual code. I feel Topcoder questions are a bit brute-force compared to the questions you'll face. Topcoder questions ask you to accomplish a task, but the extent of what you'll use is often limited to arrays and strings. You won't get good coverage of concepts like trees or linked lists.

Don't assume you'll need to get everything right during interviews. I certainly didn't. One interviewer had a distinctly negative attitude (whether this was intended or he actually flunked me, I don't know), but I still ended up doing well enough to pass. Also, don't worry about the interviewers typing or writing during the interview. Apparently, they need to take all of your code verbatim to give to the hiring committee, so however much you write, they need to write. Stay calm and talk through your answers. Don't assume you did poorly or well; it's too hard to guess, and treat each interviewer individually.

Overall, it's a long process, but a fair one. In engineering, it's important to keep standards high and consistent.

A variety of technical questions, including some basic problem-solving, some knowledge-related, and some system design.

All questions are fair; there are no riddles or brain teasers. This is a standard programming interview.