APPLICATION
Contacted by a recruitment agency for a hardware design position in the PowerVR group. 1 week after the application a Skype interview was scheduled for 2 weeks later.
SKYPE TECHNICAL INTERVIEW I, 1 hour
Skype call (no video) centered around DSP design techniques.
After a quick resume check, the interviewer gave me some short exercises, the solution of which could be reached with just basic hardware design knowledge and some logical thinking. No rush from his part, smooth experience.
2 hours after the interview I was contacted by my recruiter for scheduling a second technical interview the following week.
SKYPE TECHNICAL INTERVIEW II, 2 hours
Skype call (no video) with two interviewers.
After another resume check, I was asked to implement a FIFO with simultaneous read and write using single-port RAMs. I drove them through my thinking, I ask them some questions to guide me; I probably had some good ideas but after an hour I still wasn't able to come up with a working implementation.
Then, I was asked to complete an incomplete timing diagram for a given system. Very trivial exercise, but not well described imho. I asked them some clarification the beginning and starting from the interviewers' answer, I spent an hour trying to find the solution. I asked the initial question again but this time they gave me a different answer. After that, I was able to solve the exercise in 5 minutes.
A week after the interview the recruiter told me that I was close to be selected but I was not, because of my second technical interview. He also told me Imagination Technologies would have considered me for a verification position in the same team, without the need of other technical interviews. After 3 weeks I was contacted again and asked to complete an online test: it was an incredibly simple multiple-choice test on binary conversion and logic gates. The day after the test I was asked to have another technical interview, but I refused to do that.
I was disappointed by the last part of the recruitment process. Going back I would probably applied through the company website, in order to get feedback directly from Imagination Technologies HR.