30 interviews to land a job at Apple.

I have a 1st round in person interview with Apple this week following 2 phone screens. Hopefully it's not the first of 30.

All my previous interviewing experience is right out of college. I interviewed at several large tech companies and each followed a similar format: 1-2 phone screens, 1 all day on-site, 4-5 interviews.

I know many companies have a 'hire', 'no hire', 'need more information' policy, so it might just have been that your colleague's spouse just kept falling into that need more information category.

Wow. While I respect a company that demands the best people and wants to find people who fit with its culture, I think that's a bit much. At a certain point, one begins to wonder how much a company like that values its employees, if they're going to make them jump through that many hoops in order to get a job.

I mean, don't get me wrong - one hears that working at Apple, Google, FB, etc is the sh*t. But at a certain point, the whole process is analogous to the dating world. A person can play hard-to-get and make you jump through a string of hoops, but after a while, the interested party will inevitably reach the point where they realize their own self-worth and quit wasting their time.

A company that puts candidates through a huge number of interview rounds begins to give the message that "the Company doesn't respect you - we're much more important." And at a certain point, the really capable candidates will have too much else on their plate to continue chasing after an opportunity that never seems any closer to bearing fruit.

Doesn't match my experience when I worked there. We had a pretty typical setup: a few phone screens + one in-person all day interview round. I have to imagine he was interviewing around a bunch of different widely-spaced groups or something?

I worked at a Chapters (Canadian large chain bookstore, like B&N), and while I was talking to the manager one day he said he had someone coming in for his third interview, and this was for a regular (non-management) position.

Someone asked him how many interviews he did with a given candidate, and he said 'As many as I need to do until I'm sure either way'.

Perhaps this was just the case with this individual - maybe they just couldn't make a hard decision yet.

I honestly wouldn't want to work with people that aren't sure about me after a couple interviews.

Sorry, but this is absolute nonsense, something all too common with these friend-of-a-friend type stories. Unless he was interviewing with several different groups and getting rejected a bunch of times, there's no way he would have that many interviews.

Heh. Back in the hiring frenzy of 1988, I had 18 interviews in one day (and this on a secret from-the-east-coast-and-back trip, one weekend and one day off). Eighteen. Separate. Interviews. Looks like Apple (still love 'em) is slowing down.

I wouldn't know about Apple corporate, but as for Apple Retail (I was a Genius), the interview process was very clean and straightforward.