google recruiter first reached out in mid-Feb, had decent conversation about my background - i conveyed I have no cloud background other than me doing oracle cloud for my current organization, but i do have GCP certified fundamentals knowledge and talked about my passion and interest for cloud in general. The recruiter qualified me and passed me onto a different internal point of contact, who was NOT the best in helping me out through the rest of the interview process. After a week of back and forth, we finally scheduled my 1st technical round for end of March. I studied hard, networked hard (had 2 googlers refer for me for the role), did mock interviews with friends in similar roles but not at google, really gave it my all. My technical round went pretty good (I think) - I answered all the technical conceptual case-based questions accurately - maybe not the best polished answers, but the interviewer was in agreement with my answers and solutions and we had a good 50 min conversation! I was preparing for the next rounds of cognitive ability and leadership interviews, when i got the call from my point of contact that they are not going to proceed. No particular reason was shared, but it was really heartbreaking. I was told by the interviewer that even if I dont perform well in 1st round, they do make the candidate do all 3 rounds of interview so they can collect all data points on the candidate. So I'm not sure why I was rejected mid-process, and I wish there was better communication from google.

The interview process went quite smoothly with 4 interviews (one of them being a presentation). It was a mix of technical and behavioral questions. I passed the interviews and got a positive feedback, but the role was put on hold for months and then cancelled so overall I was disappointed. However, once you pass the interviews the feedback remains available for 12 months for similar roles at the same level, if one opens up in the same location.