I initially met a recruiter at an on-campus job fair for an internship position. The initial conversation went pretty well, and I was set up for an in-person interview with a member of the product development team the next day.

The interview conversation mainly centered around past portfolio projects and answering questions about the development process behind aspects of the designs. At times, the interviewer seemed to be asking the same question over and over again and openly criticized my past work, instigating me to defend it. This alone is completely reasonable and fine for an interview. However, be prepared to keep a level head for this, as I am sure some interviewers will try to get into your head and invoke a negative emotional reaction from you. The overall interview took about an hour.

After about a week, I heard back that the interview went well and was presented with next steps. I was given a design challenge to solve and asked to send back a three-slide presentation detailing the solution and analysis. I spent about six hours on it total over the course of a week before sending it off to the HR recruiter and my interviewer's team.

Another week went by with no response. I followed up with HR, and she said she'd talk to the team and get back to me with next steps. Another week and a half went by with no response. I followed up with HR again, after receiving another offer, and only then did I get a denial response. The best part was the email, though. It was obvious both the team and position I applied to were copied and pasted into a generic email rejection (they were in a completely different size and font!).

I find it completely unprofessional and disrespectful to see that Apple ghosts their candidates. Sure, not hearing back at all is taken as "getting the message" these days, but keeping your applicants in the dark is ridiculous. This is especially true for people further along in the process who have already invested many hours of their own time going to company job fairs, in-person interviews, and working through technical vetting questions. Want to alienate and frustrate applicants who might have thought about applying again in the future? This is how you do it.

General resume questions and more in-depth questions about portfolio projects.

Second stage was a take-home design challenge.