I applied through college or university. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Ericsson (Plano, TX) in Nov 2008
Interview
It's hard to tell. This was a unique interview. I was interviewing for a postion in which I was an already intern. They eventually gave the position to someone with more experience which was, to say the least, very disstressing. My manager interviewed me and I'd already been his employee for about 6 months. He new my strengths/weaknesses so he asked questions that he knew I had no idea how to answer in an effort to make me look stupid.
However, this is only one manager out of many and should not be a reflection on Ericsson as a whole. This guy is sharp and is usually everwhere all at once. I don't think anyone could succefully live up to his standards.
I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Ericsson (Durham, NC) in May 2007
Interview
I found a contract house online, called Aerotek, and they set up an interview for me with Ericsson. Aerotek was very supportive, meeting with me before the interview with some words of wisdom and whatnot. The interview for Ericsson involved several separate interviews by the members of the group I was interviewing to join (it was a small group, but it seems to be the standard here to have several people interview a candidate).
The group had a variety of people, with some things that were repeated with each person, and only a few things that were only hit on by particular individuals. Everyone wanted to know what was important to me about the workplace. One person gave me a logic test, which I enjoyed because I like logic problems.
The office is pretty lax, most people wear jeans, though, I still would not advise jeans for interview apparel. There's several areas in this particular office, meaning even if you start out with one job, there's a couple areas to move around to, but they are all telecommunications, so there's the software, the hardware, the testing, the research, and so on, but all about phones.
My particular branch is becoming part of a joint venture with ST, so the culture may adapt some in the future, but it will likely stay very much the same.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I had not expected to be asked logic questions, which made me nervous. The first one was a weigh nine items on a balancing scale to find the odd one out in the fewest scale uses