A friend and employee submitted my resume for a job I had found on LinkedIn. An HR representative then called me for an initial phone screen.

I then had a phone interview with the hiring manager. The call was scheduled for 30 minutes, and we talked for almost an hour. The timing was just before the Christmas holidays, so the manager told me there would be some delay in the process but wanted to speak again in two to three weeks. I had a second phone interview mid-January with the hiring manager and also a release manager currently in the role. Again, it was scheduled for 30 minutes but ended up with us exchanging ideas for nearly an hour. The manager told me that they would talk about it and that HR would contact me about moving forward if that was the decision.

HR contacted me the next day to set up an onsite visit to Cupertino. All travel arrangements were handled through Apple. I just had to go online and pick my flights, rental car, and hotel, and it was all taken care of.

I arrived for interviews the night before and was well-rested for the day. I met with 10 people. There were four interviews with myself and two people, and two interviews with individuals. One "interview" was with the hiring manager and myself over lunch. The one exception was that the hiring manager's boss was not able to be onsite the day of my interviews, so I had a phone interview with him the day before. It was 30 minutes, and he asked a lot of practical questions about running software releases.

All the interviews were very "conversational" in nature and not "interrogation" in nature. Some of that is just because of my personality, and some of it was because I had a lot of questions for them. I really felt it was a great exchange of knowledge for both parties. Most (but not all) of them had a copy of my resume and had actually read it beforehand.

The day ended with a one-on-one interview with the Senior VP over all Apple engineering. Both the HR person and the hiring manager took time to prep me for the interview with her. The hiring manager was there when I finished with the SVP and walked me out to my rental car, talking very pleasantly the whole time. He let slip that there was an internal candidate being interviewed later that week. He told me that he was anxious to move forward and felt the process was taking too long.

My interviews were on a Wednesday. The hiring manager's boss was out of the office until the next Monday. I was told that's when they would compare everyone's notes and make a decision.

HR contacted me the Friday after that with a standard form letter email, stating that they were no longer considering my application for that position.

Questions were mostly practical in nature, not the standard "tell me a time when..."