Apple Mechanical Engineer interview questions

The interview process was pretty rigorous - after an initial phone screen with the recruiter, there was another phone screen with the hiring manager followed by an out-of-office technical design challenge. The prompt was to design a feature into an existing part and build a presentation showing your process. After completing that design and sending it in, there was an in-person interview in Cupertino with the product team over the course of a morning. Interviewers came individually or in pairs and were generally asking technical questions, with more senior people coming later. Ended with the VP of the division. After about 6 hours, the interviews stopped and I was told to wait for a decision. Heard back at 7pm that schedules had closed up and the next day of interviews was cancelled - there were some substantial fires which had come up during the day that needed to be put out. For me, the whole experience was captured in the interview room (which is only accessible from the outside of the building). Interviewers were most interested in testing your technical knowledge in narrow subject areas and discovering your ability to expand within those areas. They were looking for a strong depth in a multitude of areas within a defined field. They were very up front about the team structure, anticipated job functions, and time commitment expectations. All were relatively impersonal, though the final interviewer was overly antagonistic; however, that seemed to stem from the situations developing outside the interview room. Every interviewer was far more interested in existing skill sets and technical knowledge than in enthusiasm or capacity to learn or grow. Overall, it was a neutral experience as it was not a good fit for either of us. Disclaimer: the timing of my interview was tremendously poor for Apple, so I don't know how representative my experience within the interview room is.

I was initially contacted by HR for a phone interview with the hiring manager. After a 30 minute phone call he mentioned that he would like to bring me in for a day on campus. The daylong interview consisted of many 1:1 interviews from members of the hiring team. At the end of the day I was told that they would be in contact with me about their decision. Within a week I received an e-mail from the same HR coordinator saying they were looking for someone with more experience but that my information would be kept on hand in case another position opened where I might fit in. Overall the experience was very simple and great. HR was responsive and very organized, the interviewers were all on time and skilled, and the campus is something to behold.