Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory Intelligence Systems Engineer Interview

Interviewed Jan 2011 in Laurel, MD (took a day)

This was an on-site interview that followed an on-campus interview with the college recruiter for APL. There were some communication issues, in that I was told I would be interviewing with a group in the Air & Missile Defense department, but I actually interviewed with a group in the Applied Information Sciences department. I requested but did not receive a description of the job to prepare for the interview.

I had some difficulty finding the Doubletree hotel in Columbia when driving my rental car from BWI airport. Columbia is not on the map provided by National, the road where Doubletree is located is not on most maps of Columbia, and on maps that show the hotel, it is shown as a Hilton. The hotel itself was very nice, and finding APL the next morning was a piece of cake in comparison.

The facilities at APL are great. The campus is nicely landscaped, buildings are modern and interconnected, offices are comfortable and well lit, and there is a decent cafeteria on site where my potential supervisor and I ate lunch. I follow a gluten-free, vegetarian diet and my only option was a salad.

I gave a seminar based on my PhD research, but I was interrupted so often and asked so many questions that I was not able to finish the presentation before the time was up (one hour). I gave an extended version of the same presentation in my successful thesis defense in about 40 minutes.

After the seminar, I had one-on-one interviews with four people: the group director and assistant director, the person who would be my supervisor, and the director of a related group. Everyone was very nice, seemed competent and asked intelligent questions. They emphasized the collegiality of the technical staff as a major benefit of working there, and based on what I saw I would agree. Because of the sensitive nature of the work, the descriptions of what I would be doing were very vague. Based on these vague descriptions, I was asked what my technical approach would be, which was awkward. In my opinion, the interviewers hardly got to know me and my capabilities at all. Again, communication issues.

The interview was over at 2pm, but APL's travel representative had scheduled me for a 9:30pm return flight. I hoped to get on an earlier flight on check-in but had no luck.

A few days after the interview, I was contacted by the potential supervisor, who requested copies of several technical documents I have written, including one that is still in peer review and one from a conference without published proceedings. They were apparently looking for something, but they never told me what it was they were looking for. I provided every document requested, then about a week later I received an email from an HR representative that I never met, to tell me that I would not be getting an offer. Again, communication issues.

In hindsight, the job was not a good fit for me, and I could have told them that in a phone interview. I would not hesitate to consider openings with other groups at APL, however. It does seem like a very pleasant, well funded and stimulating environment for high-level technical work.