Apple Automation Engineer Interview Questions & Reviews

Interview Details – I was contacted by an Apple recruiter about a month after I had initial applied to a position as Touch Hardware Engineer in the Touch and Sensing Group at Apple. The initial phone screening was just to give some more background on the position. She informed me that I was to be given a skills test, and once she had sent it to me, I had 24 hours to complete it. I asked if she could send it the next day.

The skills test was four questions. The first question was an analysis a voltage conversion circuit where a 5V output is stepped down to 3.3V via a voltage divider. You are suppose to give your analysis of this design in terms of pros and cons. The next two question were basic op-amp analysis questions, which were fairly straight forward. The last question was to analyze an attached data file showing the distribution of parts on two assembly lines and makes a sales decision based on the data. They wanted you to complete 1 PowerPoint slide to present your results.

After contacting the recruiter a few days later, I had a follow-up interview via Skype scheduled for the following week. The hiring manager jumped right into the technical questions. The reason they use video chat is because they will draw diagrams on a whiteboard for you to analyze. There were 3 questions: analyze a circuit and determine it's function (a boost converter), talk about the ideal properties of an op-amp (know about Gain-bandwidth product), and how to sample a square wave (know about it's frequency spectrum).

After an additional week and following up with the recruiter, I was asked to come it for an onsite interview. It was at this point that I was sent a different job description, one for the Characterization and Automation Engineer. I had a suspicion that this was a downgrade from the position to which I actually applied. I scheduled all my travel personally through the company's travel portal for an interview date another week out. I was told to study a handful of subjects for the interviews, which were 45 minutes with each staff member from 9am to 4:00pm, except for lunch. It was also at this point that I was also switched between recruiters.

Meeting with 9 people that day, I can say that I met a gamut of personalities. The process was somewhat chaotic, with some interviewers not knowing the conference room we were suppose to be in. The format of each interview was generally 5-10 minutes of questions about your resume/experience, 25 minutes of open ended technical questions, and the remainder devoted to your questions about the job. Questions about the work in the position are futile; everyone is tight lipped about the work going on. The usual answer was that it is a small group that functions like a startup. Some people were much more interactive about digging into your resume while other jumped right into the technical questions This amount of assistance with design problems at the whiteboard was similarly varied. One interviewer was quite happy in being contrary to all of my plausible answers to the open ended problems because they weren't what he was thinking. A good strategy would be to talk through everything and be as animate as possible.

The hour+ lunch with the hiring manager was easy, but my suspicions about this position being a downgrade were confirmed. To paraphrase, they put people in this position for 'a while' till people get used to things. This was deflating, but I kept with the interview.

Meeting with the recruiter was pointless and somewhat unpleasant. When asked about the salary I wanted, I told him I had a rough number in mind but didn't have any data on this position to compare it too. He told me I didn't have to worry because I would be compare to people coming from top-tier (read: better) schools. This didn't bode well, considering 80% of the staff I interviewed with went to Stanford. I did have one very rude interviewer. He showed up late to our meeting and was clearly uninterested in the interview. He was the only person to not have my resume available. While I was working out problems on the board, he was on his phone checking emails the entire time. In retrospect, it should have said something to get his attention.

After sending out thank-yous to the staff, I was informed that they would making a decision in a week and that I would hear back. I followed up after a week to learn they wanted to interview one more candidate but it was between me and him (a suspicious level of detail). They would get back to me in another week. Another week and a half went by so I followed up again. This is when I was informed the position was a better fit for the other candidate (a weird way to let some down).

Overall, it was a really good exercise in a comprehensive interview process, but the inflated ego of some employees and the hand-waving about the position did leave a bitter taste in my mouth about working at Apple.

Interview Details – Initial contact was made through a phone screen interview with the Apple recruiter. After deterimining that the opportunity was a good fit, a 1:1 interview was arranged with 2 of the current managers in the organization. The interviews were handled professionally, and the two managers were completely in sync with the needs of the business, and what kind of individual would be a good fit. Both 1:1's lasted 45 minutes.

Interview Details – INTERVIEW PROCESS:
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Usual way is 3 phone screens and one onsite interview with many people

I was initially called through a technical recruiter for a pre-screening to next level of interview and has been screened to next call and the following questions were asked in the next rounds!!
Few questions in the first round of interview and then to the second round of interview was scheduled.

An interview just said hi and has been just jumped into the too technical questions like a rapid fire round :
I am ok with C, C++, Objective C and asked about Memory Allocation in C , C++
Remove duplicates in a list with the best time complexity
Keyword "@property, synthesize and diff between atomic and non atomic"
Virtual functions and Overloading, Overriding functions
Design Patterns
Diff between hash and array in Perl

It was a 30 min interview process!!

All was kool, but should its more kind of timely questions which you have to answer.
And finally said will get back to you after discussion with the senior management level !!

Just said we will get back to you and no response..which i assumed to be declined!!

Experience was decent one, but remember you have to be attentive to answer the questions in depth !!