The whole process took 1.5 years. I visited headquarters as part of an alternative spring break with my university and then applied for a summer internship. I had already accepted an offer and started working for a different company when Autodesk called to interview me.

After that, I maintained the relationship through LinkedIn for a year to try for a position the next summer. Through that relationship, I was successful and got one of the best internship positions at the company.

The most important step was the Management Team Interview, for which I prepped by looking up everyone on the call on LinkedIn to understand their backgrounds. This allowed me to know what technical level to speak at and what rhetoric would be most effective to give satisfying answers.

(For the second time through...)

1. Resume and cover letter submitted through the career portal.
2. Call with recruiter pre-interview to determine the best fit job to interview for.
3. Pre-interview with low-level and contingent team members (2 people, engineers, non-technical interview).
4. Direct Manager Interview (1 person, direct manager, non-technical interview).
5. Management Team Interview (4 people, direct manager, direct manager's boss, and 2 other managers, non-technical interview).

Total people who interviewed me = 7 Total number of interviews = 4 (2 individual, 2 group at 2 and 4 person sizes).

After answering the "3 greatest strengths and 3 worst weaknesses" question with 3 strengths and 3 weaknesses that were "kind of strengths," I was asked to give 3 "areas for improvement" that I knew were problems, were different from my "weaknesses," and needed improvement.

This was most difficult because it was clear that the boss's boss wanted my actual weaknesses. She wanted to know that I was capable of recognizing, acknowledging, and working on my own actual faults.

She also wanted to know that I had the ability to explain my faults without making them sound terrible or being apologetic about not being perfect. Very tough to parse in the heat of the moment.