I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Tesla in Nov 2015
Interview
One introductory phone interview with recruiter, and two technical phone interviews with team members. All of the questions were fair and pertinent to the position, but not easy. Be sure to review engineering fundamentals that you feel will be relevant to the role you're interviewing for, and to know how your experience can relate to the role.
The HR was nice, he transferred my profile to a manufacturing manager and the job descriptions changed for process engineer, then the manager asked me about experience of using database, which has nothing to with my profile, and he wanted me to do some strange works that are totally different from the job descriptions he gave me. I was very confused.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Tesla (Palo Alto, CA) in Apr 2014
Interview
3 Phone Interviews with HR and 2 Technical Phone Interviews with Mechanical Engineers on the team I would be working with. I never went in for an in-person interview. HR interviews were basic questions about previous work experience and background. Technical interviews dove deeper into past projects and asked a few technical questions related to past projects I had work on. Overall the process was simple and straight forward. There were no trick questions or surprises.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Asked how the strength to weight ratio of aluminum and steel compared.