I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Qualcomm (Toronto, ON) in May 2019
Interview
Applied on the website, 30 minutes phone interview followed by a fullday onsite in Toronto. the questions are relatively easy, the hardest question is a depth first search. The team there seems to work on the state of the art, and the project sounds pretty interesting
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
how to efficiently find the number of 1 in the binary representation of a 32 bit number
The interviewers were very friendly through out the interview. The two of them asked a lot of technical questions, one mainly for machine learning related stuff, the other on scheduling tasks. Both were open to discussions.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How would you declare an int and two doubles to use space in memory as efficiently as possible?
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Qualcomm (Markham, ON) in May 2020
Interview
I got the interview through a referral from a friend working in the Markham office. My interview consisted of three rounds - the first was an online interview through an online coding IDE where I was expected to resolve some basic problems in front of some experienced engineers. This took about an hour.
The second round was a sort of rotating interview where we discussed everything from how I think about designing applications, to how I'd solve some more advanced problems. A big emphasis was placed on the ability to optimize a solution to a problem once a baseline was created. An online coding IDE was used one again when it came time for me to write some code. This took about 3 hours.
The final round was a conversation I had with a member of Qualcomm's HR team to go over some HR/behavioral questions. What really helped me prepare and be successful here, in my opinion, was the fact that I had been reviewing Amazon's leadership principals for some time by then. Being able to respond well to questions concerning Amazon's leadership principals is a great way for an engineer to prepare for any behavioral interview IMO,
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The interview process was really great. I felt like nothing that was too out of the ordinary was asked of me. Everyone I spoke to was kind and respectful.
Although a week after I completed the last round, I received a notification that the position had been put on hold. Especially after having spent a little more than a month dedicating myself to the process, I was and still am extremely disappointed that things couldn't proceed more positively. However, given that we are in a pandemic presently, and with many things in flux, the decision to freeze hiring was understandable. It was just very poor timing I imagine for the fact that the hiring freeze was set at the end of my completion of all interview rounds.