33 questions that were asked at Apple job interviews

Maya Kosoff / Business Insider @businessinsider, Nov. 20, 2015

Apple is known for being one of the most challenging and exciting places to work, so it’s not surprising to learn that getting a job there is no easy task.

Like Google and other big tech companies, Apple asks both technical questions based on your past work experience and some mind-boggling puzzles.

We combed through recent posts on Glassdoor to find some of the toughest interview questions candidates have been asked.

Some require solving tricky math problems, while others are simple but vague enough to keep you on your toes.

1. “Explain to an 8 year old what a modem/router is and its functions.” — At-Home Advisor candidate

2. “Who is your best friend?” — Family Room Specialist candidate

3. “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

4. “Describe an interesting problem and how you solved it.” — Software Engineer candidate

5. “How many children are born every day?” — Global Supply Manager candidate

6. “You have a 100 coins laying flat on a table, each with a head side and a tail side. 10 of them are heads up, 90 are tails up. You can’t feel, see or in any other way find out which side is up. Split the coins into two piles such that there are the same number of heads in each pile.” — Software Engineer candidate

7. “Describe yourself, what excites you?” — Software Engineer candidate

8. “If we hired you, what do you want to work on?” — Senior Software Engineer candidate

9. “There are three boxes, one contains only apples, one contains only oranges, and one contains both apples and oranges. The boxes have been incorrectly labeled such that no label identifies the actual contents of the box it labels. Opening just one box, and without looking in the box, you take out one piece of fruit. By looking at the fruit, how can you immediately label all of the boxes correctly?” — Software QA Engineer candidate

10. “Scenario: You’re dealing with an angry customer who was waiting for help for the past 20 minutes and is causing a commotion. She claims that she’ll just walk over to Best Buy or the Microsoft Store to get the computer she wants. Resolve this issue.” — Specialist candidate

11. “How would you breakdown the cost of this pen?” — Global Supply Manager candidate

12. “A man calls in and has an older computer that is essentially a brick. What do you do?” — Apple Care At-Home Consultant candidate

13. “Are you smart?” — Build Engineer candidate

14. “What are your failures, and how have you learned from them?” — Software Manager candidate

15. “Have you ever disagreed with a manager’s decision, and how did you approach the disagreement? Give a specific example and explain how you rectified this disagreement, what the final outcome was, and how that individual would describe you today.” — Software Engineer candidate

16. “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

17. “Tell me something that you have done in your life which you are particularly proud of.” — Software Engineering Manager candidate

18. “Why should we hire you?” — Senior Software Engineer candidate

19. “Are you creative? What’s something creative that you can think of?” — Software Engineer candidate

20. “Describe a humbling experience.” — Apple Retail Specialist candidate

21. “What’s more important, fixing the customer’s problem or creating a good customer experience?” — Apple At Home Advisor candidate

21. “Why did Apple change its name from Apple Computers Incorporated to Apple Inc.?” — Specialist candidate

22. “You seem pretty positive, what types of things bring you down?” — Family Room Specialist candidate

23. “Show me (role play) how you would show a customer you’re willing to help them by only using your voice.” — College At-Home Advisor candidate

24. “What brings you here today?” — Software Engineer candidate

25. “Given an iTunes type of app that pulls down lots of images that get stale over time, what strategy would you use to flush disused images over time?” — Software Engineer candidate

26. “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

27. “What was your best day in the last 4 years? What was your worst?” — Engineering Project Manager candidate

28. “When you walk in the Apple Store as a customer, what do you notice about the store/how do you feel when you first walk in?” — Specialist candidate

29. “Why do you want to join Apple and what will you miss at your current work if Apple hired you?” — Software Engineer candidate

30. “How would you test your favorite app?” — Software QA Engineer candidate

31. “What would you want to do 5 years from now?” — Software Engineer candidate

32. “How would you test a toaster?” — Software QA Engineer candidate