I was contacted by a recruiter to see if I had any interest in exploring opportunities with VMware. I'd be contacted previously over the course of a couple years but since I was happy in my existing role I declined. Things changed and I decided to take up the recruiter on her offer to talk.
The first call with the recruiter was the standard set of questions to see where my interests lay and what my past experience entailed. She mentioned that she was sure the hiring manager would be interested in talking with me and within a couple weeks I had a call setup with him.
The call with the hiring manager was approximately an hour, though he was 15 minutes late in calling, so it ran a bit over our scheduled time but since it was the end of my day it didn't conflict with any other appointments I had. He explored my background, talked to me about the role, and asked some basic technical questions related to the role. Things went well and he mentioned that he wanted me to come in for an in-person interview and that someone would reach out to me to set up a time to meet.
For the in-person interview I met with 8 different VMware employees, a smattering of senior engineers (some who would report to me) and managers who would be my peers. The managers generally asked manager-type questions :-) (eg what is your management style, how do you deal with performance issues, etc), the senior engineers explored my technical chops. I've been through some grinding technical interviews where the engineers try to show off their battle wounds or "get your goat," this was definitely not one. I believe the idea was to make sure the foundations were there, not to verify whether or not I knew the specifics of every existing RFC put out by the IETF. Frankly, having been on the interview circuit for a few weeks, it was a fantastic breath of fresh air and was what really sold me on wanting to work with the team. It definitely countered my expectations going into the interview.
The next bit of the process was a bit prolonged. After being told that I was "the guy" they had me speak with some more folks from other offices across the globe. The feedback came back quick from the recruiter and it was all positive. VMware was going through a "soft" hiring freeze and it took a while (more than a month) for my requisition to be formally approved. Once it did, I accepted the first offer since it was in-line with my expectations.
