I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Hulu (Santa Monica, CA) in Jan 2010
Interview
My initial interview consisted of a phone screen with an HR type person. In this we discussed my projects and competencies. Standard stuff.
After this, I had two phone interviews with software engineers. In the first, they sent me some code samples just before the interview, and we discussed these over the phone. One was quite easy, another much more challenging, but overall understandable. They involved understanding of typical data structures. I then did a coding problem in a collaborative editor, and spent some time discussing algorithm and data structure design. A second phone interview followed which was quite similar.
After performing well on the phone interviews, I was invited to try their programming challenge. This was an 8 hour challenge that involved solving a relatively open ended and fun problem (in the language of your choice). The problem required an understanding of how to interact with APIs, data structures, and general programming competency. The 8 hour time limit made this possible for a student to actually complete in a day and not take too much time from school. Overall, this was probably what sold me on spending a summer with Hulu.
I applied through university. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Hulu (Santa Monica, CA) in Nov 2013
Interview
Got the 8 hour programming challenge, completed it (they say in their email that they're looking for quality code more than actual correctness), and landed an interview the following week. Interviewer was very friendly and we hit it off pretty well. The day after the interview, my recruiter contacted me and told me I had an offer.
I applied online. I interviewed at Hulu in Mar 2013
Interview
A few weeks after I applied on Hulu's job website, I got an email says they want to interview me. First, they let me did a 8-hour programming exercise. That wasn't too difficult, but makes me exhausted since I spent the whole 8 hours solving the problem. Then after a few days, I got an email says I will have a second round of interview. During the interview, the interviewer just simply introduced himself (without asking me any questions), then went straight to the question I am going to solve. I believe the question is some kind of "classic" algorithm problem. I did solve that using brute force method but failed to provide a more efficient solution after several hints from the interviewers. So the next day, I got an reject letter.