I applied through an employee referral. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Apple
Interview
One technical interview with a junior, one general interview with a senior. They looked for a experience to be in a consultant position. The technical question was a discussion of about predicting time series of multiple iot sensors.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
You have time series of sensors, predict the next reading
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Apple (Cupertino, CA) in Oct 2017
Interview
Initial interview steps were quite straightforward. Good conversation with the hiring manager, lots of alignment between my skills and their needs. Moved forward to technical screen, 1 hour of Python exercises and general data science reasoning. I'm not a brilliant coder but I was able to talk through my solutions and their shortcomings so I got invited to a full day on-site.
That's where things went sideways. Apple is incredibly secretive about the interview process, so not only did they not tell me who I would be meeting with, they refused to even tell me what subject matter would be covered. Naturally, I prepared in line with what I had discussed with the hiring manager and given my understanding of the role. I was then blindsided by interview after interview of highly technical machine learning and software development practice interviews, none of which focused on the actual application areas that were at the core of the role (NLP and dataset management). It was almost as if I was suddenly interviewing for a different job. Needless to say, things didn't work out.
Oh and then Apple refused to reimburse any of my expenses related to the onsite visit.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Describe for me in detail the difference between L1 and L2 regularization, specifically as regards the difference in their impact on the model training process itself
I applied online. The process took 6 months. I interviewed at Apple (Cupertino, CA) in Jul 2017
Interview
Initial phone screen from recruiter, phone interview with hiring manager, technical interview, onsite interview. They were extremely slow at every step. I had to follow up several times between each step just to make sure they were still considering me. It's been a few months since I did the onsite interview and I still haven't heard a definite yes or no even after following up with every person on the recruiting team.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Every interview was a relaxed conversation. I asked as many or more questions than they asked me.