Google Inc.

My work-life balance was very much skewed towards work, but I will say that this was entirely my choice. I treated the summer as a 12 week long interview, and I wanted to get an "exceeds expectations" rating. I literally took the expectations of my manager, and specifically did extra so he could rank me that way. That extra came on weekends for me. He never asked, I just chose to do it. It is hard to exceed expectations at Google, so it was around 60 hours per week for me. At the same time, I was eating incredible food, taking several free high-quality fitness classes per week and often taking walks and breaks with colleagues. For full time, I suspect work-life balance is again your choice, depending on how quickly you want to be promoted. I also would be learning less, and trying to achieve less in a delimited period of time, which would probably require fewer weekend hours to "exceed expectations."

401K matching (up to 6%)

3 weeks/yr to start

Work smart rather than just hard. Network a lot. Have a voice. Getting a bit bureaucratic so learn to navigate a huge company with lots of competing priorities.

I had 2 rounds of interviews, and both were virtual. First was an interview with the recruiter, which was heavily behavioral. Next, I had a 2-round back-to-back Google Hangout interview with the team on which I would have been working. The questions were a mix of behavioral and what I'd call "light cases" - not McKinsey style but definitely some good thought exercises. I received an offer and they were flexible on location - either the Ann Arbor office or the Mountain View HQ.

Communicate sound structural thinking and be hypothesis-driven

It is totally mysterious, but I will say I a) got a referral from a former colleague who was a current employee and b) I emailed an mba email when I got an offer from somewhere else to let them know I would have a deadline elsewhere if they wanted to give me an interview. Who knows if those actions led to being interviewed, but those are the only actions I took other than filling out the typical MBA internship application.

“Googleyness,” structured thinking, creativity in ambiguous situations

More time to ask questions of my interviewers

Extremely smart people cuts both ways