As many of my peers have experienced, the interview/recruitment process at Google can seem very lengthy and convoluted. There is little coordination between recruiters for different jobs, so if interviewing for more than one position at a time it's very difficult to understand what the internal process is. It seems that one gets "passed" from one recruiter to another, then can't obtain a response from the original recruiter, and if a new position opens up that seems like a good fit, recruiters will not respond to inquiries. So, if you make it through numerous interviews successfully with positive feedback, even from a department head, you aren't kept on a "flagged" list of people who would actually be a good fit for future openings. You'll need to start from scratch again and hope that your resume gets noticed. The employee referral process is also not made transparent to applicants. This is terribly inefficient (and doesn't seem cost effective) and can be alienating to applicants.