Senior Developer applicants have rated the interview process at Apple with 3 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 100% positive. To compare, the company-average is 73.1% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Senior Developer roles take an average of 90 days to get hired, when considering 1 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Apple overall takes an average of 42 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Apple as a Senior Developer according to 1 Glassdoor interviews include:
One on one interview: 50%
Phone interview: 50%
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Apple (Cupertino, CA)
Interview
1) Recruiter screen - non technical
2) 1 hour programming exercise
3) On site interview
The on-site interview was scheduled from 9:30am - 1:45pm. All of the interviewers had pretty technical and challenging questions. I felt that I answered them pretty well. Yet, they followed it up with "how can you make your solution better (i.e. more efficient, scalable, and robust)?" Overall, I was able to improve on my original solution. But for some reason, they didn't want to complete the interview process with me that day. They literally walked me right out of the facilities at noon. No lunch too! The schedule and agenda was to 1:45pm. I even took the day off work for this!
The interviewers were all pretty nice to me, so I have no idea why... However, there was this one interviewer who was rather rude in my opinion. He was an Indian guy, and he was even 30 minutes late! I had to sit and wait for him in their dining area for 30 minutes before this guy showed up. I guess he got into work late. But then again, he shouldn't be getting into work at 11:00am! To top it all off, while I was answering his questions, he was working on his laptop... texting on his phone... and receiving phone calls. You would think he would show some professionalism after being late...
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Make sure you know your data structures and algorithms.
Started off with some phone screens (recruiter 1, recruiter 2, hiring manager, another developer) then a technical test to be completed and returned.
I then was flown out to Cupertino for an on-site interview. Everybody was really nice. A company full of very positive people. I saw maybe 10-12 people in total. Some technical questions, some behavioural.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Apple in Nov 2012
Interview
A smart experienced (because he had detailed technical knowledge) recruiter dropped me a line through linkedin. After a few HR screenings. I was scheduled for a couple of 30-min skype phone interviews. I was asked very good questions. It was obvious that they knew what they were talking about. No trick questions at all. The questions were directly related to what I claimed to know in my resume.
After a week, I was scheduled for an onsite interview (7 45-min sessions). Interestingly each interviewer belonged to a specific area (developer, architect, QA, Security, designer, etc.). The lunch was also an informal interview with a very nice and smart guy.
Again, the interview questions were very reasonable. They were not looking for pure geeky stuffs, but they wanted to make sure I was familiar with the basics of software engineering. There was a huge emphasis on production support and stability in all sessions from different viewpoints.
Before the onsite interview I had some doubts to leave my current good job and relocate to Cupertino. But after that I loved the env and really wanted to work there! By the way, Apple was so generous to cover the travel expenses (sort of better than my other business trips!)
Long story short, they did not contact me for about 2 weeks, until I learned that the hiring manager collected the team feedback and sort of liked me. But not for the software engineer position, he somehow found me overqualified and recommended for a project lead role.
So I am back to the step one! No offer, no rejection. I may have to fly there again... We'll see what happens. Like I said I am very happy with my current position. But working at Apple is a dream! I had seen and heard that Apple changes the world. But in the headquarter, I could feel it vividly. A balanced mixed of different skills to deliver cool solutions.
Why should we hire you?
How can we improve the performance of a system?
What's the difference between http put and post?
Traverse a binary tree.
sort a hashmap
simulate a synchronized block in a multi thread env (lock, release, etc.)
any noSQL experience?
Why Spring DI?