[rleigh]

There are degrees of enthusiasm and positivity. Everywhere else I've interviewed, people have been relatively positive since they want to sell the company to you and give you a good impression. At Google, it was way beyond that. I think cult-like is a good take on it; it was frankly a bit creepy and weird.

And as for the "recruiters", they didn't really try to sell Google at all. I think they assumed that the Google name was sufficient reason to want to work for them. (It isn't, or at least was not for me.)