I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Intel Corporation (Hillsboro, OR) in Sep 2012
Interview
After applying to several positions online and getting turned down, I finally got a phone interview from a group leader. During the phone interview I was asked to describe my research as if doing so to someone outside of my field. I was given 10 minutes to do so. Thereafter, the interviewer asked questions about some of my publications that he seemed to have already read before hand. He then proceeded to ask some tough random questions related to my optics background.
Right at the end of the phone interview, I was offered an onsite interview which I scheduled for the week after. The onsite was in Hillsboro, Oregon and comprised of a 45 minute presentation followed by questions. That was then followed by 9-10 one on one 30 minute discussions with various group members and other group leaders. I was also interviewed by the area manager who was the boss of the group leaders. All the interviews happened in the cafeteria, which made things less tense.
Ps - It is worth mentioning that the phone interview was my second with Intel. The first one had happened a week earlier with a different group leader, but somehow I got turned down for an onsite later that week. Intel recruiters tend to follow up on people like who get turned down, which is how I think I obtained the second interview (with a different group leader) a week or so later.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
what was the numerical aperture of such and such lens in your experiment? Tell me about the Michelson-morley experiment?
For my internship position I had a phone interview and was asked the "easy" questions: Tell me about yourself? What relevant project experience do you have? Interview and hiring process was slow. I interviewed in early March and wasn't given the offer until May (one reason is that my manager did the paperwork for a contract employee, so he had to redo the paperwork for a direct hire)
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Intel Corporation (Hillsboro, OR) in Aug 2012
Interview
Applied online to the ASIC group and quickly had a call from a recruiter at the company. They quickly forwarded me off to the hiring group. A phone interview soon followed. That went well enough that they asked for an in-person interview. The whole process was surprisingly very quick.
However, it was too rushed. As I went through the in person interview I realized that they were looking for someone with different qualifications. Not a single person I asked had done anything more than glanced through my resume. If they had they would have realized I was not what they were looking for and I wouldn't have made the trip. Much of the process, including the actual interviews seemed rushed and poorly prepared.
The process was a sequence of 1:1 interviews that included questions regarding experience, technical questions, and behavioral questions. Nothing special here.
Most of the interviewers were laid back and friendly, but at least one was rather in your face. Perhaps just an act for the interview to see how I'd react, but I don't believe so. I noticed here and with some other interactions with Intel people that a larger than normal number have a high level of undeserved over-confidence. As one example in the interview I had 2 people who were absolutely certain about a question I asked about the company despite giving different answers which also both disagreed with the research I did beforehand.
After almost 2 months I have not heard back from the company at all, which I think is poor etiquette.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
They asked some reasonably simple logic problems that they also wanted me to program. This person seemed to think I did a lot of programming, and I don't know why. The process of programming on a white board seemed like a strange task for this job.