Average Interview – Overall Negative Experience – No – Thu, 2 Feb 2017
Interviewed in Cupertino, CA (took 4 days)
Reached out recruiter and had a couple phone interviews with the HR group. Nothing too complex or out of ordinary. Unfortunately recruiter knew little about the specifics and provided me very little about the position other than that I would be a project manager for a platform upgrade. Then a couple days later I got a response from recruiter indicating that the Apple hiring manager liked what they saw and wanted to schedule a face to face.
My experience may be unique but I found the overall interview to be a bit like an interrogation and more of me selling myself to the company rather than the other way around. It was no very personal, the people I spoke with talked very little about their backgrounds and seemed reluctant to talk about anything not directly related to the position such as company culture, growth opportunities, etc. I was given alot of single sentence answers and it was clear that they didn't plan to talk on those topics much. Which was very odd and not something I had experienced before with other big name firms. Most are very eager to jump into those types of topics and sell candidates on why they should work there.
It was pouring rain so I showed up 15 minutes early to the interview and let the hiring manager know. A couple minutes later I met the hiring manager, I was signed into their system which took a while due to some issues with the iMac. A few minutes later the issues were resolved and I was signed in. Upon opening the front security door, the hiring manager without explanation or heads up proceeds to full on sprint to her office on the other side of building. I'm trying to follow her while avoiding collisions with other employees walking in the narrow hallway and slipping on the floor due to damp shoes from the rain. I manage to find her office despite her being 15-20 yards ahead of me the entire time. At this point I'm a very confused and not sure if this is one of those new behavioral tests tech companies are trying to implement. The manager tells me to wait in her office where there's already another Apple employee there and the official interview begins.
The question were pretty standard background and experience questions. I found alot of my responses were followed up with condescending remarks or one up statements from her own personal experiences. For instance I explained a 4 month period which I had difficulty finding work due to being laid off and took side jobs to make ends meets which I excluded from my resume due to them being unrelated to the role. She then proceeds to say that that particular year wasn't great economically but not as bad as when she was trying to find work right out of college and then eludes that I was trying very hard to find work. Again not sure if this person is rude or just part of a behavioral test. I try not to let it phase me and just keep going on but through out the interview the condescending remarks continued. The other person in the interview just sat there and didn't really contribute much or ask questions besides the math problem at the very end. Overall it was not a very comfortable interview to be in and didn't give me a very good impression of Apple or it's employees. I was not offered the position but even if I was offered it, I am unsure if I would have taken since I would have had to work directly under this person.
Interview Questions
Q: Why Apple?
Q: What frustrates you?
Q: What makes a good project manager? Why are you a good fit for this position?
Q: What are your strengths and weaknesses?
Q: How technical are you, from a scale of 1-10?
Q: How comfortable are you in Excel, from a scale of 1-10?
Q: A work resource, is available 8 hours a day, for two weeks (assuming 5 days per week) and their allocation is 30%, how many hours are they allocated for the project. (Answer: 24 hours)
Answer Question
Other Details
The interview consisted of Phone Interview, Group/Panel Interview, Skills Test and Personality Test