I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at IBM (Manchester, England) in Sep 2015
Interview
Online application, then aptitude test, also online, then the assessment centre. The whole process took a little more than a month, found out the outcome of the assessment centre on the next day, so I haven't been left hanging for long.
Application form goes through some questions like 'Tell us when you had to work with clients', 'Tell us about the time when you were leader of the group/project'. Aptitude test was series of short maths questions. Assessment day is split in two halves, first is group exercises, all of them are business-related; in the afternoon you give a short presentation and go through two individual interviews, one technical and one competency-based.
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at IBM (Manchester, England) in Sep 2015
Interview
It was a very relaxed process and everyone was very friendly. Started with a Software Engineering test then 3 group projects and presentation then 2 interviews. The interview was more informal than formal and this was to get us relaxed and no nervous.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How will you handle a group that are based in different locations?
I applied through college or university. The process took 2 days. I interviewed at IBM (Dublin, Dublin) in Jul 2015
Interview
Applied using a lecturer's contact with a previous student at my college. Few weeks later, I got a phone-call interview with a manager. He asked me a few basic questions about my studies and what projects I did. Told me before the call ended, he was going to email an official invite for interview (which was the next day). The email never came before nearing the end of the day which lead me to sending a polite reminder by email. He replied he was going to send but AGAIN he failed to send me the invitation and directions to where the interview was. Annoying but I let it pass.
Regardless, the next day I went to interview ahead of time (half-hour ahead of time in fact). The manager met me at the right time and brought me into a room with another interviewer, a software engineer. The interview began well with the manager asking me a few questions about my life and studies. The next half, the engineer ran down a list of questions relating to my skills which I majorly answered right. Meantime, the manager seemed to tune out and type non-stop emails as I answered the engineer's questions.
Last part of the interview, the engineer asked to me solve a programming problem using recursive function written in some pseudo-code in Python. I couldn't solve it unfortunately because it was something my college course never taught us in the limited-time we had to learn Python (I did an one year conversion diploma course). Obviously, a big gap in knowledge I didn't know until then.
The interview abruptly ended after that. The interviewers were already leaving the conference room before I even had time to compose myself. They didn't even ask me the typical question of "Do you have any questions?" way of ethically ending an interview. The engineer left the room to go back to his desk without even shaking my hand or saying goodbye to me after the interview. The walk back to the reception was particularly uneasy when the manager was quiet and didn't say much till he shook my hand as I left.
Overall, the experience left me with a bad mood for the rest of the day. The unprofessional nature of the manager and his engineer was frustrating. I was told I would hear back a few days later but it's weeks later now and no email since...
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Can you solve this Python script problem using a recursive function instead of loops?