I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at IBM in Mar 2014
Interview
I met a research staff member at a conference and revealed my interests on the company. Then I had a phone interview with the staff to confirm my qualification. Then I was invited as a seminar speaker. I talked to 4 postdocs/junior staffs in the morning, gave a talk at noon, and talked to 4 senior staffs/managers in the afternoon. It went well. Most of them are interested in my current research. A potential manager asked me a hypothetical question about how to deal with a specific technical problem. I had a positive experience at IBM. The job opening came up after 3 months. They are interested in my so they contacted my reference about my qualifications on that position. My reference said the position might not fit my background therefore I did not get the offer.
I applied in-person. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at IBM (Yorktown Heights, NY) in Oct 2010
Interview
I had a one-day interview that starts with a one-hour presentation followed by 10 one-on-one 30 minutes meeting with IBMers. They are very friendly and I knew them personally before. No hard technical questions were asked. They mostly want to let me know that IBM Research is a great company to work in, which I agree.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Almost none. I just have to prepare extra for the presentation, which will be attended by the whole group of around 50 researchers. This can be very intimidating for some.
I applied through college or university. The process took 2+ months. I interviewed at IBM in May 2014
Interview
I met with someone at a university event and followed up with him through email. He set up a phone interview with two people of the group. They both were very nice and the interview was on the line of trying to understand what are my strengths and weaknesses, especially since I have a non typical background for the group. They asked for some example of code I had written and promised they would follow up with me, no matter what. Not hearing back after 10 days or so, I shot an email, after which I was called by the same person, inviting me to visit the research center for a full day. There I talked with lots of people from the group in a very relaxed and open environment, the whole interview process till this point had been really great. The interview went fairly well and definitely some people were very interested in me. At the end I was told again that they would let me know as soon as possible if they were going to make me an offer or not, as communication about this is IBM policy.
After 2 weeks I did not hear anything and try to contact them with no result. I waited another 3 weeks (5 weeks total after the interview) and tried again. In half an hour I received a one line email just saying they were not going to make me an offer. At the request of some feedback, I was told that IBM does not discuss its hiring policy.
Nice interview experience, but very disappointing last phase. I do not necessarily expect to get an offer, but I would think that I should be told if that would happen or not as soon as the decision is taken, especially when in the final stage.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
No difficult questions. Mainly talking about myself and my research (even if it was not related to the group's) and basic questions about probability and algorithms.