The hiring manager was friendly and professional. After some personal questions, they tested both my software and hardware competences with some general questions regarding the topics of the internship. The interview lasted about one hour.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What is a pipeline in a processor? Why it is used?
The interviews followed a standard pattern:
- Phone discussion with a recruiter:
The focus was on general career interests and goals. Along with how those interests and goals might align with the given job.
- Phone discussion with the hiring manager:
This time the discussion focused on the job itself and how that might align with my career interests and goals. This was the first chance for me to dig deep with questions about the job to make sure I was interested. This part of the process usually determines if I'm interested or not in the job. In this case, it turned my interest up.
- Onsite interview:
A series of 1hr interviews. There were 5 of them if I remember right. I also had lunch with the hiring manager.
Each interviewer focused on a different area. For example, one focused on general SoC architecture, another on software, another on debug, another on my previous projects and how I dealt with challenges, etc. etc. My impression was that they were more concerned with how I walked through and thought about different problems that were presented to me, and also if I have a solid history of good performance. Not so much on if I answered everything 100% accurately. Though, I'm sure I answer most of everything right.
There wasn't much overlap between the interviewers which means they actually prepared an interview strategy. That's a good thing, I've been in interviews where I would end up answering the same exact question 5 times from 5 different people! Last, the interviews were very conversational, it didn't feel like an interrogation. I was also allowed plenty of time to ask my own questions.
My impressions were very positive. In the past I've walked out interviews thinking "Wow, those folks were disorganized and didn't seem to know what job I was interviewing for...." I didn't have that feeling here.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I was asked some C questions. However the focus wasn't on programming something, it was more about understanding how different parts of memory are used within the program.
Thank you for your review. I am happy that you had a great candidate experience and I look forward to seeing some great employee referrals from you going forward!