I had heard that Yelp was hiring through my university. I just recently graduated and they had a career fair going on in which Yelp was participating. So on the day of the career fair, I stopped by their booth and gave them my resume. The thing that interested me most about Yelp was the youthful culture about their organization. Yelp isn't your typical humdrum office setting. It's lively, decorative, and full of clever pop references. For example, they have Mario Bros. art on the wall and I was interviewed in the Guns N' Roses room. The little things like that made it seem like a very appealing and fun work environment. I'm getting a bit ahead of myself though.
Anyway, the career fair was on a Wednesday and Yelp contacted me on Friday to set up a time for a phone interview on Monday, so they were pretty prompt in their responsiveness. The phone interview was standard. Nothing too difficult, just questions like, what do you know about Yelp and why do you want to work here? The phone interviewer also asked me about how I deal with rejection. She sounded impressed and then said they would be in contact to set up an onsite interview.
The onsite interview took place two days later. I was interviewed by three separate managers. The questions they asked were fairly easy. The only one that sort of threw me off was when the final interviewer asked me what was "off-mark" about myself. There's also a lot of role play involved, so be prepared to sell something and deal with disgruntled customer scenarios. Overall, I thought the interview was pretty average; mostly straightforward with an unexpected question here and there.
The thing that disappointed me though was that two of the interviewers did not seem very enthusiastic and one seemed totally disinterested in me from the start, which was somewhat discouraging. I tried to be as friendly and outgoing as I could, but apparently they were more interested in assertiveness, which is why I think I didn't get an offer. With the exception of the middle interviewer, who was eager to learn about me and converse, the others were a little cold and distant.