It’s no secret that bagging a job at Apple is tough. The company is one of the most valuable in the world, pulling in US$233 billion in revenue for FY2015 and it has one of the best reputations on the planet.
But aside from bucket loads of talent, what’s Apple really looking for in a prospective employee? Well, it looks like we might have the answer. Well, kind of.
After combing through tonnes of questions from real-life Apple interviews from work rating site Glassdoor, Business Insider has featured some of the most fascinating, baffling and downright silly.
Here are some of our favourites, which might make you smile, terrify you or give you food for thought if you’ve got an interview coming up and want to be prepared for everything that might be thrown your way.
- “Are you smart?” — Build Engineer Candidate
- “Explain to an 8 year old what a modem/router is and its functions.” — At-Home Advisor candidate
- “If you have 2 eggs, and you want to figure out what’s the highest floor from which you can drop the egg without breaking it, how would you do it? What’s the optimal solution?” — Software Engineer candidate
- “You put a glass of water on a record turntable and begin slowly increasing the speed. What happens first — does the glass slide off, tip over, or does the water splash out?”– Mechanical Engineer candidate
- “Are you creative? What’s something creative that you can think of?” — Software Engineer candidate
If you’re given a jar with a mix of fair and unfair coins, and you pull one out and flip it 3 times, and get the specific sequence heads heads tails, what are the chances that you pulled out a fair or an unfair coin?” — Lead Analyst candidate - “What was your best day in the last 4 years? What was your worst?”– Engineering Project Manager candidate
- “How would you test your favourite app?” — Software QA Engineer candidate
- “How would you test a toaster?” — Software QA Engineer candidate
This article originally appeared on Lifehacker UK
Comments
One response to “Prepare For Offbeat Interview Questions By Learning What Apple Asks Prospective Employees”
I found this one interesting. “You put a glass of water on a record turntable and begin slowly increasing the speed. What happens first — does the glass slide off, tip over, or does the water splash out?”– Mechanical Engineer candidate
I search for the answer and a few popped up yet no one asked the basic question I would have asked the interviewer “has the turntable been modified”. If the answer is no then you know that the glass cannot be placed in the centre because of the centre spigot that holds the record central.
Just a thought.
Its a discussion starter. The behaviour or the glass-water system depends on the aspect ratio of the glass, and the amount of water in it.
So a squat whisky tumbler would probably be spun off by centifugal force, rather than tip. If it has but a couple of ml of water then the water might slide up the glass and over the lip.