Pros
I applied online in early June and received initial contact from the hiring manager in early July. The first phone interview was with the hiring manager. He told me a bit about his particular department and the types of products his UX team is currently working on. He then asked me to talk about a couple of projects in my online portfolio. A few weeks later I had a second phone interview with two members of the UX team. The conversation was the same as the first call. Throughout the process, the manager was kind enough to keep me in the loop instead of leaving me in the infamous black hole of uncertainty. He was very accommodating when I expressed that I had received another offer while waiting for IBM to make their decision and tried to fast-track the process for me. I was then asked to fill out my residential and criminal histories for the last seven years. After this, I took the IBM Information Processing Aptitude Test (IPAT) which consisted of three logic-based sections, two of which were numbers based. I'm not a math person, so this was nerve-wracking for me, but I heard that it's an outdated test that they don't really pay attention to. A few days later, The manager asked to set up a short phone call. I was expecting another interview or to talk about flying me out for an on-site interview, but to my surprise was offered the position. It was a great base salary offer with great benefits for someone fresh out of college like myself. I'm still in the process of gathering information prior to starting, but I can tell that IBM wants us to succeed. It still feels like I'm dreaming.
Cons
In the beginning I was only communicating with the hiring manager. Once I received the offer letter, I was told to communicate with a recruiter from HQ in Armonk, NY. Having to deal with a completely new person in a completely different location kind of slowed the process down and it seemed somewhat unnecessary to involve a third party at this point. Since then, the recruiter has been much slower in responding than the manager, but I don't want to distract the manager from his primary job. Because of this, the on-boarding process could be made a bit smoother. Communications with a slow-to-respond recruiter is frustrating when you have less than two weeks to find an apartment and move across the East coast.
