Difficult Interview – Overall Negative Experience – No – Tue, 1 Dec 2015
Interviewed Jul 2015 in Cupertino, CA(took 28 days)
I applied online for a few Firmware Engineer positions on the Apple website and I was contacted by 2 different recruiters for 2 separate teams. I had a brief HR screen with both of them and I had a further phone screen set up with both team's Hiring Managers. They mostly involved in-depth questions about my Resume and also some code exercises that I did well on. I was informed the next day after both interviews that they would like to move forward. In both cases, I was told that a second technical phone screen would be set up with a member of the respective teams I was interviewing with.
This second round of phone interviews was also very technical and I did well in them. I was then told by recruiters for both teams that they would like to bring me to CA for a day of interviewing. Managing this was a bit disorienting since each team's recruiter seemed to operate autonomously, and since the flying cross-country would eat into my vacation time, I told them that I would like to interview with both teams on the same trip. In hindsight, this was a bad idea.
My first interview went terribly. It was about 8 interviews with 1 person each back-to-back lasting about 45 minutes- 1 hr each. It was in a claustrophobic meeting room the size of a literal closet where we had to get out of each other's way to use the whiteboard. At least 2 of the interviewers were openly contemptuous of my lack of experience in a particular technology, even though it was never mentioned once on my Resume and I had explicitly asked in my phone screens whether this would be a problem, and had been assured that it was not. One interviewer even made a point of visibly making notes on my Resume such as "Does not know X" and making snide remarks about how he was surprised I did "not even know this". I should really have stood up and walked out at this point, but I didn't. The day continued in this vein till the evening, and at the end I was sure that I would probably not get the offer, and was almost sure that I would not have accepted even if they did. I spent the evening fuming and had a bad night.
My second interview was the next day and was a whole different experience. The interview rooms were slightly less terrible in this building. There were 4 different interviews lasting about an hour with 2 interviewers together. I got the distinct impression that they were trying to find out my skills and experience as opposed to getting under my skin. Unfortunately, I was so frazzled and upset about the last day that I missed a few questions that I really would have done well at in a better frame of mind, and I'm pretty convinced that if this had been the first interview I had had, my chances of getting an offer would have been much higher.
Interview Questions
Write a function that when given a certain set of numbers, displays all possible subsets of it.
Answer Question
Other Details
The interview consisted of a Phone Interview, 1:1 Interview, Group/Panel Interview and a Skills Test