Intel phone interview tips? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: Fantasma25
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2014, 03:36:33 am
content: Today I received a phone call from Intel telling me that they wanted to interview me by phone in two days. I'm obviously super excited since it's one of my dream jobs, but for the same reason I'm a bit nervous that I'd blow it off. About a month ago I took a knowledge test on a recruitment visit they made in my town, and they told us that the test was like the equivalent of a phone interview and a little bit more (I'm assuming they contacted me because of that test). What do you think I should expect them to ask me? Should I ask them by email before? Do you have any tips? The position is called "HW Design Engineer" and its mostly about simulation with FPGAs. Thanks!

author: djacobow
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2014, 05:25:04 am
content: When I interviewed at Intel, ahem, 20 years ago, the phone screen was mostly to get a general sense of your interest and knowledge. There were some technical question, but I was just out of undergrad, so they were not design knowledge stuff so much as intelligence stuff.The real interview interview was on-site: a gauntlet of 5 one-hour interviews. It was brutal. I don't even remember the categories. An hour on semiconductor physics, an hour on digital logic design, an hour on process technology, and hour on CPUs and computers (I was interviewing for a CPU design job.) Maybe there was one hour of general Q and A that was not technical. I do remember the whole affair was draining -- but I got the job. It was at their facility in Chandler, AZ, designing 16b microcontrollers.It was actually a great place to start my career, since they really train you, and how else is going to teach you how to design chips? (I don't mean as a professor would, but how it's done in real life.) After a few years I wanted to work on the "big boy" x86 stuff. It turns out that was not nearly as much fun. Bigger teams and more specialization. That microcontroller group was all about soup-to-nuts generalists.Of course, none of this is probably useful to you, it being so damn old. But I look forward to hearing back about what the process is like today!

author: Fantasma25
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2014, 01:17:47 pm
content: Quote from: djacobow on November 25, 2014, 05:25:04 amWow! That is really interesting (and a bit scary). In the conference they gave us they told us that the on-site evaluation difficulty was according to the education level (I'm about to graduate from college), but they never mentioned 5 hour interviews :s. Anyway, I guess I'll start studying hard. Thanks!

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2014, 02:57:14 pm
content: One advice, be sincere and if you don't know things don't try to BS. It OK though to say I don't know but my guess is that... (It actually shows that you have common sense). Good luck.

author: Fantasma25
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2014, 03:15:39 pm
content: Quote from: zapta on November 25, 2014, 02:57:14 pmThat's a good tip! Thanks!

author: djacobow
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2014, 03:21:17 pm
content: Quote from: zapta on November 25, 2014, 02:57:14 pmAgree with this, totally. A new college graduate is not expected to be an expert on anything. If things are as they were 20 years ago, they are going to be looking for a solid foundation of basic understanding. The emphasis when I was hired in Chandler was on "breadth" but I strongly suspect that's changed these days. Some typical questions from such an interview: What happens to gate capacitance as gate oxide thickness is reduced? Why is electron mobility higher than hole mobility? Why do they say a NAND gate is functionally complete? Explain 1's and 2's complement arithmetic. What is the difference between a "Moore" and "Mealy" machine. How do you make a flip-flop from latches. Design a state machine for a traffic light. Why would you want to use a Grey code? What is cache for? What is the difference between Harvard and Von Neuman architecture? If a read from cache takes 2 cycles but a miss takes 500 cycles, what ratio of hits must be maintained to keep reads on average to 3 cycles? What is the difference between a const pointer to an int and a pointer to a const int?You said you are interviewing for an FPGA design position? I'd be ready to talk about FPGAs. How do they work? What are the tradeoffs between a large, complex logic cell and a simple one? Why are their hard macros in FPGAs? What are the downsides of including them? Why is FPGA performance not usually as good as an ASIC or mask programmed gate array? (may not even be true anymore) What are some of the basic differences between FPGA families? Be able to talk about setup and hold times, too. Also, this being the modern era, I'd expect questions about HDLs. If you say you know Verilog and not VHDL then they're not going to hit you with VHDL questions for spite. But be sure to be able to talk about Verilog. Understand behavioral, RTL, and gate-level coding styles. Understand what synthesis tools can do for you and what they can't, etc.

author: Fantasma25
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2014, 03:34:04 pm
content: Quote from: djacobow on November 25, 2014, 03:21:17 pmWow! That is really good information!! Some of those questions were on the test they gave us at the recruitment visit, but I'd probably expect them to ask me again with more detail, so I better start refreshing my memory. Thank you very much!!

author: Fantasma25
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2014, 06:21:39 pm
content: Quote from: djacobow on November 25, 2014, 03:21:17 pmI just sent an email to the person that is going to interview me and he said that he's going to ask me about digital design and basic programming, so your questions are going to be extremely helpful. Thanks!!

author: Kappes Buur
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 26, 2014, 12:29:27 am
content: I don't know if this will be relevant in your case.The trend of recruitment nowadays is to conduct, besides questions of your level of knowledge , a personality assessment of how well one fits into a group of other design members and general behaviour. After all, if they hire you, and I hope they will, they will spend many costly resources to bring you up to speed.

author: electronic_eel
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 26, 2014, 12:40:01 am
content: Use common sense and if you don't understand something or something really doesn't make sense - say so.When we do recruitment tests in my company (not Intel) we usually ask one question which obviously doesn't make sense. We want the recruits to recognize this and say so.

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 26, 2014, 02:08:18 am
content: I have been working here at Intel since 1978. We haven't hired anyone from outside in our group for several years, so I'm not up on the current practices. And, of course Intel is rather large and spread out all over the planet, so different groups (and different managers) probably have different styles, etc.But one thing you might want to prepare yourself for is "behavioral" interview questions.Look it up on Google for more info, but here is the first search hit with many example questions:http://www.quintcareers.com/sample_behavioral.htmlIf you have only academic (and not "Real World") experience, then explain that and do your best to apply the spirit of the question to your experience at school, etc.Don't let the "5 hour interview" trouble you. They walk you around the office/cafeteria/lab/wherever and you meet with different people for 30 or 60 minutes each. They want to find the best person for their job opening, and they hope you are the best person for the job as much as you do. And I suspect that they don't expect you to sit there on the phone for 5 hours!

author: Fantasma25
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 26, 2014, 02:36:20 am
content: Quote from: Kappes Buur on November 26, 2014, 12:29:27 amI believe this is going to be true, since they are hiring from all education levels (BS, MS, PhD). Thanks!!Quote from: electronic_eel on November 26, 2014, 12:40:01 amThat's useful information! I'll watch for that. Thanks!!Quote from: Richard Crowley on November 26, 2014, 02:08:18 amI went through those questions once and I wasn't prepared, but not this time. I'll start planning my answers. Thank you so much for the link! They told me the interview was going to be about 30 minutes, but the next stage may be that mythical 5 hour interview. Thank you!

author: eee
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 26, 2014, 09:36:41 am
content: Here's a tip:(Not joking, wearing a suit does in fact influence the way you speak and how you'll come across, especially if you rarely wear one).Good luck - you got this!!

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 26, 2014, 02:35:30 pm
content: At least the Intel sites that I have worked in (or visited) in the western USA are pretty casual places. The only people you see wearing suits, white shirts, and ties are the people being interviewed. Any time someone is seen wearing a suit, the universal response is: "Are you interviewing for a new job?" But even though we don't dress like that every day, wearing a suit is a sign that you are serious about the interview.Yes, there is advice out there to "scope out" the company to see how everyone dresses and follow their lead. But my theory is that it is better to be "over-dressed" than "under-dressed". I don't remember in recent history seeing a candidate being interviewed who wasn't wearing a suit (or the equivalent for women).

author: miguelvp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 26, 2014, 05:38:19 pm
content: He actually can be naked, since it's a phone interview

author: eee
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 26, 2014, 11:13:56 pm
content: Quote from: miguelvp on November 26, 2014, 05:38:19 pmThat's what I'm trying to say - suit up, even though it's a phone interview. It'll go much better since the OP will be more confident in his responses.

author: Fantasma25
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 27, 2014, 12:35:33 am
content: So... the interview went well. He asked me about what I've done with FPGAs and what is my design process. Most of the questions were oriented towards timing constrait problems. There was a question I couldn't answer related to how to make a design run at 50MHz if the synthesis and routing tools say "I made my best effort, but it will only be able to run at 25MHz". Since I have never had to face that kind of problems (most of the modules I've made run at 10MHz tops), I told him with all honesty that I needed to research that. He told me that it's ok, and advised me to run the examples in the Xilinx application notes just to have that extra knowledge since they face that kind of problems daily. Since I graudate in May he told me to send him a reminding email around april so that he can make me a more formal personal interview. What do you think?

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 27, 2014, 02:29:27 am
content: Sounds pretty good to me.

author: anomla
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: November 27, 2014, 11:56:47 am
content: You are lucky to get the call from Intel. Best of luck

author: Scrts
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 29, 2014, 10:59:01 pm
content: Quote from: Fantasma25 on November 27, 2014, 12:35:33 amThey probably expected the word "pipeline"