I applied online. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Apple (Cupertino, CA) in Apr 2013
Interview
HR contacted me from my resume posted to their career website. Was interested in a commodity I had years of experience with. Asked for an updated resume and would share with the team and get back to me. 4 weeks later I sent an email asking for feedback. 2 weeks later said it was still in motion. After another 4 weeks they set up an on-site interview one week later. I was told to expect to be there all day. On the interview date, arrived at 8am and the plan was to meet with 5 people. Sat in an office until 4pm while the people would come in breifly and ask me to go over my resume - appeared none had looked at my resume prior to coming in and were in a hurry to get back to what they were doing. Sometimes hours between someone coming in and they wanted me to sit there all day, even lunch hour, and wait for them - even though they all had assigned times. I would have reported to the fourth person to interview me - turned out he wasn't even interviewing me for the commodity I was experienced with - even though that's all the previous people asked about. The last interviewer was surprised when I mentioned this. All were nice people and easy to speak with - I'm just not used to the total lack of communication.
The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Apple (Cupertino, CA) in Jan 2010
Interview
Talent Acquisition was knowledgable and did a good job summing up the role. After two conversations, I advanced to a phone interview with the hiring manager. The hiring manager seemed great - it was more of a conversation than an interview. None of the questions were too out-of-the-box, but it seemed like a great fit. I was scheduled for one more set of interviews - the peer panel, which occurred a week later. The peer reviews were very poorly run - the two peer panel interviewers seemed to be completely unprepared about my background and were disorganized. My questions were specific and caught them off-guard. I suspect this was potentially due to the secretive culture at Apple. They made no attempt to really understand what my background was. After this conversation, the HR manager sent me a note telling me that they were very interested in having me come for in-person interviews, and would let me know within a week, but that communication never happened, despite my repeated attempts to reach out. I ultimately gave up 1-2 months later.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Describe a scenario where you were asked to lead a team that was initially unsuccessful in accomplishing its goals. How did you work to resolve the situation?