I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Epic (Madison, WI) in Sep 2009
Interview
1.Emailed by HR rep to take initial online Rembrandt personality and math test. (Found it silly but played along--in hindsight, this was a red flag.)
2. Scheduled for a phone "interview," which mainly consisted of the Epic person asking me for dates of when I started/left previous jobs.
3. Flown out for an on-site cattle-call style interview. The Madison cab drivers all shake their heads at Epic candidates because there are THAT many people interviewed each week.
4. Told I would be made an offer or not in 1 week and heard back a few weeks later.
There were about 10 prospective candidates at the hotel and all of us went out to dinner with an Epic employee. This was described as a 1:1 dinner, however there wasn't really much 1:1, since there were so many of us. The Epic employee was nice and had lots of information but had a tight-lipped deer-in-the-headlights look when we asked what the formula was to get hired (It's obviously some SAT+GRE+School Ranking/age formula). Seriously, the guy looked SCARED when we asked about the formula--and we were only kind of kidding...
On site, I was asked to make a 10-minute presentation to 4 Epic employees (PowerPoint not allowed). Not a big deal. And all of my interviews went well. Most of them were the Epic employees following a script describing their jobs and/or asking the same (scripted) typical HR questions. What I found ridiculous was that they flew me out only to put me in a small, creepy office ALONE for 3 hours or so with written tests. These tests were basic math story problems, verbal (more like riddles), and programming tests. I understand that they want empirical evidence that someone is intelligent, but to anyone who is not just out of college... it is incredibly tedious and insulting. Apparently they have not heard the news in Madison that research has shown time and again that these standardized tests MEAN NOTHING. For a company that caters to evidence-based medicine... you need to revisit your tired hiring process. Bottom line: If you really want a job at Epic, get a GRE review book and familiarize yourself with those types of questions. And if you're over 30 years old, forget it. (The age rumors are most definitely true.)
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
What is something that (one of your references) would say you could improve on?
I applied through college or university. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Epic in Nov 2009
Interview
Met Epic at my university's career fair. Seemed like a pretty neat company. I gave them my resume and I got an email a week later saying they'd like to set up a phone interview, which was short and really easy. Then i had to take a skill-assessment test, which was harder than i thought it'd be, but apparently I did well cause i got an on-site interview. Haven't done that yet, but i'm preparing a 10 min presentation for it. Hopefully it goes well.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
When was the last time you made a big impact in a leadership role?
The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Epic (Madison, WI) in Oct 2009
Interview
The first phase of the process is a phone interview, which is easy and requires no preparation (they just verify resume info). Before the phone interview you also have to do an online personality test (also easy).
The next step is they fly you over to Madison, which is a surprisingly lovely city. You're set up in a nice hotel and you can opt to have a free dinner with an Epic employee that night, which I did. This is where things start to go down hill as all the trappings of a fine-tuned, mass-interviewing apparatus become increasingly apparent. You don't get a one-on-one dinner. Instead, along come 5 or 6 other people, all interviewing for your same position the next day (that's okay though...Epic is such a large company that at any given time they've got to be hiring for multiple vacancies...so no worries yet). I had a blast at this dinner, really talking and getting to know my fellow interviewees. The Epic employee mentioned that only about 0.1% of applicants are hired at Epic, but that number sounded so bizarre as to not be plausible. I dismissed it.
The next day my cab driver warned me that I "have a lot of competition," saying that for the past 3 years Epic has been interviewing 10-12 applicants per day, every working day of the year. I was not too worried by this, since afterall I love a challenge. The whole interview process consisted of 6 hours of a mix between them providing meinformation about the company/their software/the project management role, interspersed with verbal, math, and programming assessments, a project management interview/assessment (they give you a PM scenario and you have to identify the biggest problems and how you would address these problems), a 10-minutes presentation that you give on the topic of your choice, and a 1 on 1 interview with HR (this came last, and after getting up at 5am and going for 6 hours straight, it was difficult for me to answer her questions). During part of your day you're with a huge group of other interviewees, and many of the staff that speak to you seem bored (as if they've done this a thousand times).
Overall, the whole experience seemed to be a waste of time giving the poor odds of actually being hired. If you do go on this interview I suggest giving it your all, but not investing too much of yourself in your prospect of being hired.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How would you deal with a team leader who is ineffective and consistently fails to meet deadlines?