A typical interview process for Apple, along with a handful of other companies, is described as followed. However, the exact process may depend on the role and team you’re interviewing with.
Preliminary Round: Recruiter Screening
Typically this call is to assess your fit as a candidate before being passed on to the team. Be prepared to talk about the job, your background, and your motives. Make sure to turn any noes into positives (e.g. do you have experience with X? No, but I have experience with Y and Z).
1st Round: Technical Screening
This round usually happens with an engineer or hiring manager on the team and is meant to assess overall technical knowledge such as beams, stress & strain, and heat transfer.
Thankfully, this is something you can prepare for and a good way to start is by reviewing popular mechanical engineering questions. To supplment this, you can anticpate some of the concepts they care more about based on the scope of your role, the team, and its product.
2nd Round: Design Challenge
The following round will be an opportunity to show multidimensional thinking by applying knowledge of material selection, manufacturability, design for assembly, reliability, costs, and user experience to a specified prompt.
Prompts can range from designing a battery door with a certain mechanism to designing a component that protects electronics from electromagnetic signals while also sinking heat (see the link above for more detail). Once completed, the project will be conveyed through a presentation to a panel and you’ll need to defend your decisions/answer questions.
3rd Round: On-Site Interviews
This round is typically over the course of a day and can range from 3-6 1:1s with engineers. Questions can be technical questions (GD&T, Plastics, Reliability, etc. in addition to the fundamentals), behavioral questions (Tell me about yourself? Why Apple? Why not previous company? Tell me about a time when…?), or questions relating to your design challenge and previous projects.
Make sure to “learn on the fly”, as in a lesson or mistake made in one 1:1 can be applied to following 1:1s to ensure it doesn’t happen more than once, especially if similar questions are being asked. Also make sure to have a good set of questions to pull from (relating to interviewer’s personal experiences, motives for joining/staying, etc.) for times when questions might not come to mind.
Lastly, reviewing the product or service the team you’re interviewing with provides can go a long way (i.e. brief product history, related technicals principles, and ideas for improvement) in terms of being ready for questions they might ask or having a conversation.
4th Round: Director Call
This call is usually a brief assessment of cultural fit and why you’re interested in Apple. But like the previous rounds, be ready for anything!
Good luck!