I applied in-person. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Qualcomm (San Diego, CA) in Oct 2010
Interview
I applied to the company on their career website; previously knew about them since they are a very large and prominent company in San Diego. Got an e-mail from HR a few days later to schedule a phone interview.
Phone interview consisted of two, 45-min interview: a HR person, talking extremely fast about Qualcomm (benefits, etc.) and a short general interest question (Why Qualcomm?), as well as a technical phone interview. The technical interview were just some basic object oriented questions, some specifics on Java (references), and one string manipulation question.
One thing that stuck out to me: the technical phone interviewer did not seem too knowledgeable. She asked me to swap two variables without a temp: gave her the usual XOR answer; she then asked if java had a XOR method. *face-palm* Wasn't sure if she knew how to code or she just knew java after that...
The scheduler got back to me in a week or so to go forward with an on-site interview. I think it got scheduled about 10 days or so later. The on-site interview took up an entire day, and consisted of 7 people, one of who took me out to lunch.
The first person was your basic guide into the company; she basically got a good grasp of what kind of expertise I might have, and added a person the interview list. Second person was awesome, took me out to lunch, but didn't ask questions while eating (I generally like people who understand the importance of food). He mostly asked questions about stacks, linked lists vs, arrays, etc. Next guy asked mostly about working in group dynamics. Most of the interviewers asked "How would you test ____?" and expect you to come up with test cases.
The only hiccup was that the added-on interviewer wasn't quite as prepared as everyone else, but given that it was changed at last minute that was understandable.
Didn't hear back from HR for two weeks, so I sent a follow-up email. HR e-mailed back saying that QCT was going under a re-org, so even though I did well in the interview, they likely won't be hiring anyone for a while. :(
Other Notes:
PROS -- free lunch~ and free candy in the waiting room :D their facilities are awesome and they let you play with display devices (HTC phones, kindle, nook, anything with a Qualcomm chip in it) in their waiting room in the career building. Also, they will give you rides if you didn't bring a car. They were extremely organized and very professional. (No long waiting times, no interviewers goofing off).
CONS -- Feet hurt a lot after walking back and forth between two buildings. (Would not suggest shoes that wear out their comfort after 2 hours). Rather long wait time between the phone and the on-site interview.
Interview questions [5]
Question 1
What are the differences between a linked list and an array? What are the pros and cons? What kind of situations would you use each in?
Can a stack be a queue? Can a queue be a stack?
Tell me about yourself. How did you get into computer engineering/(insert relevant college major)?
What were your group projects like? How did you decide who did what? Do you prefer to work in groups or alone? Do you prefer big groups or small groups? What's the difference between with just 1 partner vs. many people?
I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Qualcomm in Jan 2008
Interview
most what the job description wants.
Technical round of interview. It all depends on the interviewer too.
it can go into the details of everything from coding to wireless comm.
I applied through college or university. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Qualcomm in Jan 2010
Interview
applied through college career website and got a phone call to have a technical interview with the team member. i had few technical questions int he first phone calls. dint get all the questions right but the interviewer helped me in solving the questions. a week later i received a mail from the HR that i cleared the first round and then fixed the time for the second round. the second round was also technical and asked me to write a basic algo problem. couple of weeks later i went onsite had three rounds of interviews and also had lot of fun activities like skiing and skating.. the whole interview process was fun
void foo(char*a, char*b){
while(*a++ = *b**);
return;
}
int main(){
char buf[20];
foo(buff,"Hello");
printf("%s",buff);
}
what is the output for this program?
you are provided with a string write a program to identify the most frequently occurring char in the string?
in Java and also in c/C++.. explained the algo over phone and submitted the program later