What It's Like Getting Hired By Apple

Jeremy FooThe job offer package.

When Apple offers you a job, it sends along a job offer package that looks like one of its products. 

"Well designed, great unboxing experience and super high quality materials," says Jeremy Foo, who got a job at Apple and wrote about the process on Medium. 

Foo tried to get a job at Apple for four years. 

He says his first attempt was a learning experience. He was contacted by a recruiter through LinkedIn. He did well-enough on the phone interview that he was asked to write some code.

"The code review was brutal," says Foo. "The author of UITableView eviscerated every decision I made in the design of that piece of work. It was pretty obvious that at that moment, everything was a bust. What I also did realise was also how high the bar was and that I had a lot of work to do."

He spent the next few years bouncing around the world, working at startups (including his own). 

Jeremy FooAh, paperwork.

In June of this year, an Apple recruiter reached out to him again through LinkedIn. Apple is looking for people on the Apple TV team. But, the Apple TV team rejected his resume. The recruiter tried other parts of the company, but he couldn't make the onsite interview. After that, Foo heard nothing from Apple.

In September, someone from the Apple TV team tweeted that he was hiring. Foo decided to take one more run at a job at Apple. This time he had success. He got through the phone interviews, and had an onsite interview set up. 

He described the hiring process:

They paid for everything. I flew in on a Thursday to work off the jet lag, got a rental car and drove to my hotel. Spent the rest of Thursday just cramming Data Structures and Algorithms.

The onsite interviews were structured with 2 interviewers in 45 minute session with 5 sessions in total and a short break for lunch. It was perhaps the most intense thing I've ever done to get a job, yet throughout the whole time I fed off the challenge that presented itself and had a blast.

I am eternally grateful for the hiring team because they did not ask crazy computer science 101 questions. Sensible topics were discussed and coincidentally, most of the problems were things I've already tackled at work. Some were even core philosophical ideas I had about engineering.

He went home, unsure of how he did. But, it worked out. He received a job offer via FedEx, and he'll begin working at Apple in January.