The computer science department of our university sent out an email to the graduate students' listserv mentioning a possible opportunity at Synovus's Data Management (DM) and Business Intelligence (BI) team at their HQ in Columbus, GA. I just emailed the company contact saying I was interested in the position (i included my resume along with the email - so as to eliminate one extra round of conversation). She replied immediately within asking for my work authorization status and gave me a phone number to call whenever I was ready to talk. So I called about 10 min later. Turned out, the contact who interviewed me was indeed the director/project manager of the whole DM and BI team. Phone Interview: First thing she asked me was, "Being a phd candidate, and having such an impressive resume with 7 publications under your belt, why would you want to apply for this position? wont you get bored coming here?" I said, blah blah blah. Then she asked me about my previous projects and asked me to explain my thought process while making a business decision to go in a certain path or choose a certain platform over its counterpart and so on. She asked me some SQL Server questions and about my previous work. After about 30 mins of my non-stop rambling, she asked me to drive down to their HQ for a meeting/interview with her team. Group (in person) Interview (on-site): Less technical, more talking about myself and where I come from.