The Apple interview process 2001

Like I said before I finally got a call. It was a woman who asked me some very basic questions about my Mac knowledge, which at the time, was pretty good. Most of the questions were pretty softball in nature, nothing hard hitting like "If you were a frog what color would be the sound you would make, and why"? Yes that was a real interview question I was asked by another company, but I digress. On the phone with this person it was unclear that they were representing Apple and not Apple. Good news, she said I had made it through to the next person who would call me shortly to do a "tech" interview. "Shortly" in Apple's terms is about 2 agonizing weeks! Finally I get a call from a guy named Colin, who I had the pleasure of meeting later in the process. He gave me an over view of the what the call was going to be like and it would take about 20-30 minutes. He would ask me various "tech" questions and based on my answers it would be determined if I would go to the next round. I still remember the first question I was asked. "You have an Airport base station with no lights blinking on the front, whats your first troubleshooting step?" I response was "Make sure it was plugged in." I later found out after having dinner with Colin a few weeks later that he was ready to send me to to the next stage after answering that first question. Apparently there were far too many people that wanted to start with way more complex troubleshooting then that. There were a bunch more questions but none too hard, and I was told I would get a phone call for the next steps.

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Surprisingly this call came a bit faster and there were going to be face to face interviews. I figured this would be with the newly hired management team but I was mistaken. We arrived at a local days inn in Latham NY around 8am along with about 70 other people who were there to interview! I remember my friend was wearing a suit and I had on cargo shorts, t-shirt and some Tevas. My thinking was I had a good job, and really if it worked out great, but I was in no hurry to work a retail job. Little did I know the 70 people being interviewed were all being interviewed for the genius positions, all 4 of them.