I started off by applying online, within 24 hours I got an e-mail to schedule a date to take an intelligence and personality test. I did a lot of research on the company and found that there was a lot of turmoil with the way the business was run, but it was a good starting point for entry level programmers.
The day I went to the company's location for testing I took an aptitude test, a personality test and went through 3 interviews. I spent about 5 hours there in total. The aptitude test was not very difficult, but in the problem solving section there were definitely a lot more problems than could be solved in the allotted time. The personality test required that you do not submit many middle of the road answers, and they wanted a yes or no to questions that definitely required explanation and clarification. I think those types of personality tests can never paint an accurate picture of who a person is. In reality most situations aren't an agree, disagree or maybe.
Anyway, immediately after my test, I was asked to wait and go through the interview process. I had an interview with a recruiter which went very well - she was very friendly, there were lots of laughs and she asked basic questions not pertaining to skills.
Subsequently, I had 2 more interviews with people who worked in the software development department. These interviews definitely included skills questions. At that point I had no professional experience, all my programming had been school or personal projects. So I explained the details of those and how they were implemented. It seemed like they were trying to put on a good cop, bad cop routine. The second interviewer was very intimidating, brash and showed cold facial expressions. The third interviewer was very friendly and much more interactive and they both asked the same types of questions. My guess is that situation was used to see how a person would handle different personality types.
At the end, I did not get a job offer and I can't guess why. I did well with the testing, and thought the interviews went well also. I wish companies gave feedback and reasons for not hiring a person.