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My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

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Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#181

Post by wmkn »

jedc wrote: post #172

I used to work for Google and did a ton of interviews for roles where I was the hiring manager, as well as others. One of the more painful things that I came across regularly was that we often had multiple great people go through the full interview process for a role, but could only hire one. Often 2-3 candidates could have done the job brilliantly, but we could only choose one. In that case, it tends to be really su…

Google always has openings for hundreds of engineers. If multiple people did well and the process is so expensive, why not hire all of them?

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#182

Post by vijucat »

gummadi wrote: post #161
vijucat wrote: post #159

The "Are you good enough for us?" interview process is seriously broken, maybe even neurotic, considering that the excessive focus on weeding out false positives actually ends up rejecting too many good people such as you who would end up contributing a LOT. The inequation is : Savings due to reducing false positives 10X lower It takes intelligence to realize this, because weeding out false positives (LHS) is a Reali…

>> Give everyone a long probation period, and allowing them to seek feedback frequently as to how they can influence the decision to hire them on a more permanent basis so that the final decision will not be a surprise binary event. Hypothetically, let's assume every company follows this method and around 30% of the employees who went through long probation period didn't make it through. Wouldn't that leave the emplo…

This will not be as big a problem as you assume because the "everyone in his professional circle who knows that he or she didn't make it through company X's probation period" would also have gotten their fair chance to try their hand at being a Google or Apple employee, to aim as high as possible, and would have faced the same rate of rejection.

It is only a problem if failing probation is a huge black mark. If there are a large number of people for whom the company-employee fit didn't occur, the word "probation" would lose it's sting. Maybe we can call it an "apprenticeship" period? Or other innocuous term without previous negative connotation.

> In addition to that, the employer will also accrue a lot more negative publicity from the employees who didn't make it through.

The same could be said of ex-employees, too.

In general, the problem is the neurosis of giving too much importance to "failure" or "probation". It is ironic that this is the case even in a startup discussion board :-)

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#183

Post by davidw »

downandout wrote: post #165
davidw wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an Apple fan, and wouldn't apply there myself, but this doesn't actually sound that bad. It moved along relatively quickly and he had a definitive answer in a fairly short time frame after his interview was done.

4 months is quick?

Given that they had Thanksgiving and the holidays in the middle, yeah, it's not bad for a big company. Read some of the Google interview stories.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#184

Post by skuhn »

jedc wrote: post #172

I used to work for Google and did a ton of interviews for roles where I was the hiring manager, as well as others. One of the more painful things that I came across regularly was that we often had multiple great people go through the full interview process for a role, but could only hire one. Often 2-3 candidates could have done the job brilliantly, but we could only choose one. In that case, it tends to be really su…

This is the startup secret weapon: they can hire people that Google (and other large companies) cannot. When there's no shortage of work to do, and hiring is a constant struggle, you can hire as many good people as show up at the door.

A lot of startups do still hire with a large company mindset, but I think they're making a big mistake.

Simply the process of getting approval for a job req and playing the required politics screws everything up. I've actually been pressured to hire someone just to hold onto the req at a large company, with the up-front, stated intention to fire the person in a month or two and keep looking.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#185

Post by bumbledraven »

jedc wrote: post #172

I used to work for Google and did a ton of interviews for roles where I was the hiring manager, as well as others. One of the more painful things that I came across regularly was that we often had multiple great people go through the full interview process for a role, but could only hire one. Often 2-3 candidates could have done the job brilliantly, but we could only choose one. In that case, it tends to be really su…

How long ago were you doing these interviews? Currently, a company like Google/Facebook/Apple will hire all the good people they can find.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#186

Post by robmcm »

skore wrote: post #176
robmcm wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been on the other side when consulting at a 4 letter company in that location. Most of the time you know nothing about the interview until someone asks you to give them a technical screening an hour before. There is also no formal process or seeming involvement from HR, it's just a, "is this person any good". From my experience it often comes down to, in order of importance: - Are they willing to be perm - Do…

> the best interview process is hiring someone as a consultant, and then converting them after a year or so Unfortunately, this is also a "great" way to keep temp employees in constant limbo with the perm job as the carrot and stick. Usually, the temp job also leaves you with a lot less money (particularly because all the perks - insurance etc. - are reserved for proper employees) and, depending on the company, that'…

Ironically it's the opposite in the UK, temp employees in the tech industry typically earn a lot more.

In context to the interview I was talking about the perm rate was half of the contract rates they were paying people on the same team.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#187

Post by whybroke »

It wouldn't happen if it weren't economically wise. Contrary to claims to the contrary there is no shortage of adequately qualified candidates and an endless and growing sea of unqualified. So randomly rejecting the majority of qualified candidates is a relatively small price since the hiring goal is to get rid of the vast sea of unqualified.

If there were indeed a shortage the practice would be reversed and companies would be willing to risk hiring unqualified workers in order never to miss the one candidate who can do the job.

But so long as there is a flood of less qualified workers along side a good number of skilled ones, the practice will continue or worsen.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#188

Post by tomp »

sb8244 wrote: post #4

Idk. Flaunting how much the process cost and how much income it lost was sort of put off for me. It's great to see insight into interviews, in general, but that just left a weird bitter note to the article.

Same here. S/he sure does come of as very butthurt (is there a better, less "offensive" word for that?). It wasn't a "shallow 'no'", it was just a "no", what else did s/he expect (companies usually don't give usable feedback because of legal reasons)?! S/he seems hurt to get a "no" after 6 hours of in-person interviews, but obviously, if it was a guaranteed "yes", you wouldn't even need an interview!

In other words, just another unsuccessful interview, nothing unusual here, nor anything that Apple did badly or wrong.

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#189

Post by tomp »

byuu wrote: post #24
joslin01 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I always cringe a little bit when I see people breakdown their time to an imaginary monetary loss. This way of looking at things comes with a pretty heavy dose of narcissism if you ask me. It says "People would be paying me money for what I'm doing for free right now; look how much I'm sacrificing." While there might be quite a few people out there who could get away with billing their time at any given ho…

Yeah I wouldn't quantify how much money I personally lost, but it's absolutely fair to specify how many hours of time were lost. I value my free time. That's time I could be learning a new skill, working on a product, or just having fun. Either way, it's time I gave up for nothing. I understand wanting to really vet someone first; but it really does seem kind of excessive how long these interview processes are becomi…

> but it's absolutely fair to specify how many hours of time were lost

I don't think it is. First of all, the hours aren't "lost", they are "cost of getting a job" - you don't interview without at least considering the possibility of not getting an offer. Anyone who expects to get a job after every interview they do is delusional. It's like the time you spend pitching your services to a client who then decides not to hire you - not "lost" time, but "cost of business".

Re: My experience of interviewing for a job at Apple

#190

Post by jedc »

skuhn wrote: post #184
jedc wrote: post #172

I used to work for Google and did a ton of interviews for roles where I was the hiring manager, as well as others. One of the more painful things that I came across regularly was that we often had multiple great people go through the full interview process for a role, but could only hire one. Often 2-3 candidates could have done the job brilliantly, but we could only choose one. In that case, it tends to be really su…

This is the startup secret weapon: they can hire people that Google (and other large companies) cannot. When there's no shortage of work to do, and hiring is a constant struggle, you can hire as many good people as show up at the door. A lot of startups do still hire with a large company mindset, but I think they're making a big mistake. Simply the process of getting approval for a job req and playing the required po…

> I've actually been pressured to hire someone just to hold onto the req at a large company, with the up-front, stated intention to fire the person in a month or two and keep looking.

Wow, that is seriously fked up. While I got pressure to hire (one role I hired for was very specific so it took a long time to find a candidate), as long as I was actively sourcing/interviewing people, I never got too much flak. You've got to keep a hiring bar high... and not screw people over!

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