My expirence and tips for an Apple Interview

So i had my interview today, ill try to keep it in chronological order, followed by some notes at the end.

The interview was for 12, i got there around 11:35 after stopping by parrish's awesome new store to check it out.
Dude in an apple tshirt took everyone's name, phone number and email, gave everyone a name tag with their first name on it. There was about 20 of us in total. were all called into a conference room down a hall, there were a bunch of apple people high five'in everyone on their way down the hall and into the room. We sat down three to a table, i made sure i got a table in the middle. The apple people introduced themselves, there were seven of them, the main person leading the interview was Mary Astephan who is an apple recruiter, the rest were made up of mangers and genius's from other apple stores. They all had clip boards and wrote down various notes about people all through the event.

After the introduction we watched a movie about apples retail division, usual propaganda, we sell the $7k per sq/ft which is the most in the retail world, we have over 6.6bil in sales in the last quarter of 2009 ect. It also talked about the individual attention given to customers, i think they said they did over 2.5mil one on on training sessions a year. After the film we were asked some simple questions on it. After that was a lisde show with different apple products, she asked us who has an iblah blah and how awesome is it and what do you use it for, ra ra rah!

The next event was we were to get to know someone near us, find out something unique about them their history and why they want to work for apple. We were going to be giving a talk about the other person so i made sure to feed my guy the proper points i wanted him to point out about me. After we got to know the other person we went around the room and talked to the group about what we found out about the other person. Basically you had to interview the other person then sell them to the group. We went first, got a few laughs out of the group, i think it went well.

After that we watched another video about apple, more about the physical stores, there international locations and the people that work for apple. After the video their were some more questions on it, they just wanted to see then things you picked up on in the video, ex passion for the store, great team environment, awesome locations and what not.

The next major thing we did was break into groups of 5 with one of the people from apple, there was a 6 sided cube with several questions on it, i can't remember all of them but one was, tell us about a time when you went above and beyond for the customer, tell us a time when you had to deal with a condescending customer that talked down to you (really specific for some reason) give us an example of a very difficult technical problem you had to work through. So we went around in a circle and everyone held the cube and gave a response to one of the questions on it. That went on for about 20 min.

The next thing was a slide presentation with video, more focused on the store and the positions in an apple store. The apple stores are divided into 2 sections, one is the "red" zone where you first come in, are greeted and what not. the second zone is where the genius bar is, the one on one training area are ect. The only apple store i've been to is the one on north Michigan street in Chicago, the bottom floor is the red zone and the top floor is the other zone. The presenter also went through the apple store position, genius, expert, family programs, business manager, specialist, Back of house stock manger, ext. After that slide show was over we had a general QA. People asked the usual question, how much do the jobs pay (can't comment) when does the store open (can't comment) how many positions are you going to be filling (can't comment) ect. Now the interesting part is that they were not hiring any geniuses because they already had them in place.

So after the QA we filled out some paper with our info, positions we'd like, full time or part time, availability, what apple products we own ect. Everything wrapped up just after two. At 3:30 i got the call for the second round of interviews for Thursday, and i should know by Friday if i have the job. The second interview is a smaller group with only 2 or three applicants. I'll give that one a run down Thursday night.

Notes:
As i figured they were looking for personality above everything else. Most of the people in the room either had a college degree or were students, there was a nice age range starting and 22 and going up to maybe late 40's early 50's. Depending on who i see for the second round im guessing they chose the people that participated in the conversation. The two other guys seated at me table didn't answer any questions or chime in at any point during the event so i have a feeling they might not be getting a call back. What nice is that there were 6 people besides the presenter keeping an eye on the room so i made sure to make some subtle yet noticeable gestures such as pouring water for the guys at my table, getting chairs for people and things like that. Overall I think i was able to participate in the group discussion with out saying anything too dumb or trying to hard like this one dude at the front of the room who would just not shut the ---- up. Yes you love mac, yes your an artist, yes you've been to blah blah. I'd be surprised if i see him at round 2.


Edit: So as i mentioned all the genius positions had been filled. I found out for a friend of mine that the apple rep in the area had scouted out talent from the best buy across the street so it looks like the genius staff is going to be mostly made up of former best buy people. This does not bring me happiness.

Damn polar bears

Kat Werner: Polar Bears?
Josh: yea, i rode one to school as a kid
Kat Werner: Oh?
Kat Werner: 0_o
Josh: yea
Kat Werner: Any pictures?
Josh: no but here's an artists rendering: