I was initially contacted over LinkedIn by one of Apple's recruiters and scheduled a phone call. After that conversation, the recruiter thought I would be a better fit for a different team and redirected me to a second recruiter.

Initially, the second recruiter was very responsive. I was amazed at how quickly he got back to me, even late in the evening. More on this recruiter later...

I was then scheduled for an initial phone call with an engineer on the team I was being considered for. The interviewer thought the phone call went well, and I was asked to come onsite.

My experience onsite was largely positive. I enjoyed speaking with the engineers and the hiring manager. The role was for a DevOps position, so the questions encompassed both coding and questions about how to do things on the command line and how to automate tasks. The engineers and the hiring manager were very nice and respectful.

Now back to the recruiter. The recruiter was nice, but it sounded like he hadn't even reviewed my profile. After he escorted me to the interview room, we chatted for a few minutes before the first interviewer showed up. He told me about the team I was interviewing for and what their responsibilities were. He then asked questions like, "So, are you technical? Do you code?" It didn't sound like he had reviewed my profile at all (I'm an experienced engineer with a decent amount of coding experience).

After I finished the onsite, I wrote the recruiter a thank you email. He responded and said that I would have feedback the next day. I didn't hear from him the next day. A week later, I sent another email to follow up and did not receive a response. A few days after that, I received an offer from another company, and I sent the recruiter one additional email to let him know and to see if they wanted to move forward or not. Again, I received no response.

Overall, the actual experience of speaking with the engineers was quite pleasant, but the recruiter was not very professional after the interview had concluded. I assume that Apple will not be moving forward, but I would have appreciated explicit communication informing me of my status. Even a generic "We're not interested in moving forward at this time" would have been sufficient, but no follow-up is somewhat disrespectful in my opinion.

Scripting questions and command line proficiency questions