MKS Interview Questions & Reviews

Interviewed Jan 2010 (took 2 months)

I went through an initial gauntlet of four interviews, each one hour via phone, including a technical screen that included a Webex session. I was being evaluated for my understanding of software life cycle tools and general ability to function as a customer-facing technical resource, where the customer is working in a software development organization.

In my initial conversations I was led to believe that if I aced these interviews, I'd be flown in for a face-to-face. What happened instead is that I was set up for a call with the VP of Sales, which was then canceled. Note that the process started at the beginning of December, and we are now in the middle of January.

Eventually I was set up with another phone screen with a Director reporting into the Sales VP, this conversation went "OK" but I got the impression I had failed to "wow" the guy. I then waited almost two weeks and heard no feedback. I emailed the hiring manager with whom I'd initially spoken, and he responded as though he had heard nothing on his end. A few days later I got a boilerplate rejection letter from HR.

Overall I was impressed by every individual person at MKS, but if the way the hiring process is handled is any reflection on a company, my feedback is that no one took responsibility or accountability for how the process was managed. My gut feeling is that they changed their minds in the middle of the process about how to set the bar for this position.

The good news is that I landed a job at a company that makes extensive use of MKS tools, and the fact that I was in the MKS interview pipeline was a key selling point. :)