Allow me to walk you through my Apple interview process.. but first let me start off by saying: Apple looked like a really cool place to work at. A company that expounds the greatness of its culture, the pretty decent benefits and perks offered, and a not-too-shabby hourly wage: Those were the reasons that first attracted me to the Apple careers site. But I soon found that although Apple dangles these tantalizing carrots in the faces of its prospective employees, the company does not practice what it preaches.

I didn’t sign a nondisclosure, so suck it Apple . This tell-all may make Apple fanboys bash this exposé as a flame. This article, however, presents the reality – a quite informative one for those who are going for the job – of my Apple interview experience. I’m going to tell you everything I said and did, that got me all the way through to the final third interview at Apple Corporate. I’ll try to give some tips based on my experiences. Hopefully, this insight will help some of you to actually snag the job. And besides the “suck it, Apple” comment above, I promise to be objective in my narrative.  So here goes.

The Intrigue
So I decided to try my luck with Apple. As a 22 year-old college junior with a very strong resume (including both corporate and retail experience), I figured I was qualified to work Apple retail. So I hit the Apple jobs site, created a profile, wrote up a cover letter, and submitted my resume and references.  Part of the application is a multiple choice survey featuring such gems as:
Why do you want to work at Apple? (check-able responses included ‘I like helping people,’ ‘I love Apple products,’ ‘I just want a job,’ etc). I answered ‘I like helping people’ and made it clear in my cover letter that I have limited Apple gear experience, but strong interpersonal skills.
The survey was about five questions, and filled with key words meant to weed out undesired applicants. Apple presents a very strong customer relations/service demeanor. The answers you select for this survey pretty much tell Apple if you’re a fit for the company. So place an emphasis on your people skills.  I checked that I would be interested in all of the Retail positions. This did not work against me. All in all, I spent an hour and a half on the application process and was pretty satisfied with job I’d done.

First Contact
About four days later, I received an email from Apple Retail, telling me there would be a 2 day hiring event at the end of the week. The email asked me to RSVP my top three choices for a date and time. It stated that I’d get confirmation the same day. I politely RSVP-d with my preferences. In reality, my heart was pounding. I’d done my research on the hiring process through our good friend Google (I’m sure those of you reading this have done the same). I’d read that it may take months to get any feedback or response from anyone event remotely connected to Apple. Not wanting to mess this up, I sent two confirmation emails, one as a reply, and one as a separate subject. I made sure to note I had flexibility, being a student on summer break.
Around noon the next day I received an automated email with my date and time. An hour later I received a second email from a person at Apple Retail. It gave me a second date and time, saying the slot I’d been accepted to earlier was filled.  I replied by posting the first automated response to verify if it was still applicable. I wouldn’t mind the time change, but I didn’t want to be lost in the shuffle. (A nightmare scenario being me signed up for 2 events and having it held against me that I missed one.) The same person replied back to apologize. Apple Retail had made a mistake with the second email. The first email was the right time. I was too excited to have been invited to a hiring event to raise an eyebrow at the miscommunication. Maybe I should have taken more note of that. Either way, I was ecstatic and counted the days to the event that week.