Process:
I was not job hunting. I was recruited through linkedin. I figured it was an opportunity I couldn't ignore. I submitted a resume, cover letter, and sample work. They put me in contact with a hiring manager. I had a 30 minute phone interview with him. It was very basic screening (salary, willing to move, willing to travel, etc).
I was referred to the actual manager for the position who set up a technical phone interview (I lived cross country). He canceled once and rescheduled for two weeks later. Then he moved the meeting time back a couple of hours on the day of. The technical interview was appropriate to ensure I was qualified for the position. I had to answer several questions building on each other regarding engineering (materials, design decisions, etc). We briefly reviewed some of my sample work too. The interviewer was late on the call and had to hang up at one point to call another interviewee who was scheduled after me to tell them that he'd be late. He called me back to finish up. There were no questions about me as a person. He was only concerned with my engineering skills. He also left me almost no time to ask questions. At the end of the interview he told me he wanted to bring me in for an on-site interview. Later, the recruiter told me 1 in 6 or 7 people get past the phone interview.
I received an email that evening with a design challenge. The concept was to test drive my skills with a basic engineering problem that they give all interviewees (for benchmarking). I had one week to submit drawings, analysis, and CAD. I submitted my work and was supposed to received feedback but never did. People spends hours and hours on these submissions. Its critical.
The onsite interview was scheduled as two days. The first day was several hours of continuous meetings with various engineers including one over lunch. The second day was supposed to be a review of my design submission.
Opinion:
I did not like the interview process. Trying to be objective, it was one directional, impersonal and poorly executed. It would be more accurate to call the process a test and not an interview. Perhaps, they have so much demand that they can get away with it. I was left in a conference room with an itinerary and people came and went over several hours. There was no oversight. I was left alone for 30 minutes at one point. I felt the majority of interviewers were unprepared, not engaged, and uninterested with anything other than technical questions. Perhaps they were all under a deadline. A number of them showed up late and others just glanced at my resume or sample work for the first time in the meeting. Half of them had a stock question that they asked and everything hinged on your answer to that which is fine with me. But, I also felt that they were looking for a specific answer and not anything creative nor did they have the patience to let you work out the solution. A lot of them were good people and good engineers but I was also turned off by the general attitude of superiority carried by the employees I met. I just didn't vibe with that. I prefer casual creative collaboration. Obviously, it didn't work out. Neither side felt it was a fit. I didn't feel like the experience would have given me enough insight about working there to decide to move cross country. Cupertino left a lot to be desired. The offices were less impressive than I was expecting but I didn't get a tour either. I know they are building a new state of the art facility. Apple was very generous with their accommodations. Money is not a concern for them. I come from smaller work environments so a company of 50,000 going on 85,000 was too big of a leap.