I applied online. I interviewed at Apple (Sunnyvale, CA)
Interview
Applied online, one of the team managers contacted for phone interviews. Had it scheduled. He called a little late, but informed me. After the interview he informed another manager. The other manager had her team call me. In fact the other manager was communicating via email on a sunday to fix my interview. The overall experience was good.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Why should we hire you?, Why Apple? Questions related to my experience.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Apple (Cupertino, CA) in Jan 2011
Interview
1 Phone screen followed by 8 hour long on site interview.
Phone screen was basic questions.
On site interview was conducted by 10 people . Since I knew my subject matter, they were pretty easy
I applied online. The process took 4 months. I interviewed at Apple (Cupertino, CA)
Interview
I uploaded my documents to the Apple website, but did not hear back from them for several months. Once I heard back from them, they set up a phone interview sometime within the next couple of days. The phone interview was about an hour long and they asked personal (nothing illegal, haha), behavioral, and technical questions. The technical questions were not too difficult and I did not answer all of them correctly.
A few days later, they asked me to come in for an on-site interview, to which I agreed. I set up the flights, hotel, etc., with their input. I arrived the day before the interview. There are up to two days of interviews. Whether or not you get the interview on the second day depends upon how the first day went, they let you know that within a few hours after leaving.
The first day of interviews was with people whose team you would be joining. They mostly ask technical questions pertaining to knowledge you would need to do the job. They also ask you quite a few questions about anything technical on your resume that they may be interested in. For example, I had done a bit of C several years ago and one of the guys asked me some questions in C, which kind of threw me off since it had been so long since I had done any.
The second day of interviews was with people who are higher up in the food chain. They were still engineers, but engineering managers. There were still quite a few technical questions on this day, but they asked quite a few non-technical questions as well.
They offered me the position a few days after the interviews were over. They asked me how much I wanted to get paid, I gave them a number that was low (I was unaware of that at the time), and they counter-offered with something that was 20% higher.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I was asked some questions about C that one would not know the answer to unless if they had done it more recently than myself (several years ago for me). That kind of threw me off and I did not need to know C for the position. The guy said the only reason he asked me was because he studied computer science in university (two decades or so ago).