I shared my resume with them during the Career Fair at my university. I had to submit the usual video interview, then I got a call for the phone interview.

Phone Interview:

• It was about a 45-50 minute technical interview.
• Questions covered engineering math, general programming concepts, MATLAB, C++, and DSP.
• Math questions covered systems of linear equations, line equations, and some algebra.
• Programming and C++: OOPs concepts, specifically inheritance and parent/child constructors.
• MATLAB: Difference between A' and A. (both are the same), and how to reload workspace variables on MATLAB startup (look up startup.m and finish.m online).
• DSP: Causality, stability, pole-zero plots, and simple convolution and filtering.

I received a call for onsite interviews about a week later. They scheduled a trip to Natick, MA, and covered all incurred expenses.

Hiring Manager Interview:

• Remember, this person will be your manager if you get the job.

• Usual behavioral questions from your resume, such as what you learned from a project, how you managed conflicts of interest in a group, and when you had to handle multiple responsibilities and how you accomplished it.

HR Interview:

• First, she explained the work culture, benefits, and a lot of logistical details.
• Then, there were more behavioral questions that exactly overlapped with the manager interview. I later heard this is done purposely.

After that, I was taken to lunch (on the company campus) by two ASEs. This is also planned! The ASEs are employees working with the same manager you interviewed with. So, they also try to gather information about you and report it to the manager. Your interaction with them during lunch counts towards your interview performance!

After lunch, I had the technical interview.

Programming:

• Design a class structure for your department in college. Then, I was asked what methods you would use to extract specific information.
• Write a recursive function for calculating fibonacci(x). This means the function should return the x'th number in the Fibonacci sequence (e.g., fibonacci(4) will be 3). You can choose any programming language.
• Then, some more inheritance questions.
• Do you know about suppressing warnings in MATLAB and private functions in MATLAB?
• Cell arrays in MATLAB.
• Write a program to draw an arc starting at a point on the y-axis. The radius is given, and from the provided information, it was also possible to find the angle of the arc with the origin, starting from a point on the y-axis and drawn clockwise.
• Defining variables in functions and trying to access them from the MATLAB command prompt as if they were workspace variables.
• Main functions and sub-functions in MATLAB.

Math:

• Find the area of the largest rectangle under a curve symmetric about the y-axis. The equation of the curve was given.
• Find the gradient of a scalar function.
• A few more questions which I don't quite remember.

Digital Signal Processing:

• Partial fractions, Z-transforms, and comments on causality and stability.
• Decimation and interpolation.
• Finding the digital frequency of a mixture of signals.

Overall, it went well for me, and I did not get stuck at any point.

Afterward, we were taken on a tour of their buildings. In the evening, some employees took us out for dinner, and we had a lot of interaction and fun.

However, to this day, I do not understand the reason for them rejecting my offer. I would say the overall experience was great, and we also got to explore Boston. But, the company's needs might not always align with your profile, even if they invite you onsite.

Hope this helps, and all the best!

What will your adviser's comments be on you?