You need to be very careful and well-prepared for what appears to be race-based discrimination against you by some upper managers of Indian origin, especially if you were not born in that country. No matter how excellent you are, how much energy and time you have spent on preparation, how capable you have proven yourself to be, or how much those Apple engineers and first-line managers like you, you may easily be denied the opportunity to be hired because of that. This is not just my own story, but many others'. Note that I myself have many Indian friends, and when I was a manager, I hired quite a few engineers who happened to be Indian, based on their skills instead of national origin. This made me very sad to know this kind of audacious discrimination exists not just in the USA, but in a company like Apple.

I'm an experienced Wi-Fi test engineer and I made very good preparation for the interview. I even bought some Apple BT products and did some testing myself. The on-site interview with engineers turned out to be a success. I answered their questions, making them happy and impressing them with the good qualities I have as an adept engineer. The Apple recruiter informed me later that I "did a good job" and passed the on-site interview. The next step was a quick phone interview with the second-line manager, who is Indian. I was told by some Apple Insiders that this could be just "symbolic" and very easy to pass USUALLY.

This Indian manager, when talking to me on the phone, sounded cold, indifferent, and distrustful. In a word, he appeared to be unfriendly to me for no reason. He asked me some questions only to make me feel like he was trying to nit-pick. I got this ominous feeling, so I asked some friends who are in Apple for their advice. To my surprise, they told me that it's COMMON for an Indian director to give vetoes to interview-approved non-Indian candidates and green lights to Indians so that only Indian candidates get hired. Double standards are applied here so that even a less qualified Indian gets hired because he "has potentials," and a perfect non-Indian gets rejected because of some strange reasons like, "I don't think this guy is that perfect because nobody is that perfect," or "He said he likes to move to the Bay Area because of the opportunities, which means he may in the future leave Apple for other opportunities."

Not to my surprise, the recruiter now told me I am rejected.

When I say "non-Indian," it could be a Chinese, a White, a Korean, etc.

In the meanwhile, some folks on some Chinese BBS shared similar stories about how they were rejected for being hired by Apple by some Indian directors unfairly and in favor of Indian candidates, allegedly. You can't argue, they said, since those people have all the unthinkable and often funny reasons to kill the opportunity you have made all your efforts for. We are thinking of doing something to stop it. To say the least, this is a scandal for Apple that not a single American can bear with. It is a threat to our values. It is not just unfair, but evil. Period.