Qualcomm Engineering Staff Interview Questions & Reviews

Interview Details – Appied online. Met 5 interviewers. Kind. Got offer and completed whole process in 3 weeks.

Negotiation Details – not so much. a little bit trimming

Interview Details – Initial screening was the phone interview
Questions based on resume and about CDMA, soft-hand, OFDM
Was invited for on-site interview
On site consisted of interviews with 7 senior engineers
Qualcomm is well organized in conducting these interviews, so the only thing you need to worry about is to be prepared and be confident
All the interviewers were extremely humble and nice, they will test your knowledge in all the areas mentioned in the job description and resume, so read through everything
Here are the questions I was asked, I hope this helps.
- diff bw gsm nd cdma
- rake receiver - how do they combine signals?
- draw constellation dig nd expalin diff nw 64 nd 16 qam
- what is diff bw tcp nd udp
- what is fast retransmit in tcp
- how does ofdm allow high data rate compared to gsm? what is the trade-off
- what is the trade off of using higher modulation scheme
- how many non-overlapping channels in 802.11? name them
- exp rf planning and design
- what is equalization? how is it done?
- cyclic prefix
- does tcp use positive or negative ack?
- how are carriers made orthogonal in ofdm?
- what do u know about lte/4g nwks?
- what does an lte phone do when its switched on first?
- what does the capacity of a mimo channel depend on?
- why is 4*4 or 8*8 mimo not implemented? - no space of phone hardware
- why is softhand off not used in gsm nd lte? - spare time slots and sub-channels used too precious to use for soft hand-off
- arrange in order of capacity, mimo, simo, miso
- although simo is better than miso, it is more commonly used/ why is rx diversity not explioted - no space on mobile phones to have multiple antennas
- what are pico nd femto cells?
- what is fdd and tdd
- what is half rate in fdd nd tdd
- lots of conceptual questions on freq selective fading in dsss and ofdm
- how is multipath mitigated in ofdm nd dsss
- how does a recevier do demodulation?
- how does the receiver know when a transmission ends in tcp?
- what are pilot sequences? how are they used? - used in ofdm
- what is 3dB gain/loss imply?
- whar is rayleigh and ricean fading?

Interview Details – Initial phone screen, on-site interview, several lunch meetings, then an offer

Interview Details – Two stage process. Stage I a straight forward "who are you" set of HR questions. Stage II 5 one hour one-on-one technical sessions of medium to low difficulty. Interviewers were generally pleasant with a pervasive sense of we need help in the air.

Negotiation Details – No negotiation basically a take it or leave it situation.

Interview Details – It was very easy to apply for different positions at different locations. The callback happened very quickly after the application. An initial phone screen was conducted with detailed questions. Met and interviewed with several staff members and the questions were technical and challenging.

Negotiation Details – negotiator asked what my current salary, bonuses, benefits, and vacation time were. They exceeded those values.

Interview Details – I got interviewed by five people. 2 of them were very technical and detail. 3 of them were asking general questions about my past experiences.

Interview Details – Applied online, got an email from Interview co-ordinator for possible dates for ph screen.Had ph screen with hiring manager, asked tech question. Then called for in person interview... Interview took a whole day with 7 diff people. WIth in 2 days got an email for a 2nd round of interview since upper management wanted to meet me.. It consisted of 3 directors.Then in 4-5 days HR called with offer..Have patience QC takes long time to set up the inter person interview... waited 2 -3 weeks for the first in person and the second interview took another 2 weeks to set up. By then I already got another offer from a different company.But liked the people and the culture there..

Reason for Declining – Got an offer from another company closer to home.

Interview Details – A panel of 9 people interviewed me. So we had more of group interview Later this was followed by 1:1 interview concentrating on differnt aspects of design, verification and concept understanding.

Reason for Declining – Got an equally good offer from competitor.

Interview Details – Applied for bunch of positions online and also referred through a friend. Initial phone interview was for 1hr and covered experience listed in resume. Called later for on-site interview. Interviewed with hiring manger, director, 4 other engineers & HR. Most interviews were on my recent work experiences and was friendly and modestly technical. As long as you can back up what you have listed on your resume you should be good.

Negotiation Details – To some extent provided. But you had a very valid reason why their offer was not sufficient.