Not invested in who they're hiring if they rely heavily on multiple assessments for applicants to take (personality quiz, etc). These are unpaid and take hours. A poor use of time.
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Epic (Madison, WI) in Sept 2009
Interview
1.Emailed by HR rep to take initial online Rembrandt personality and math test. (Found it silly but played along--in hindsight, this was a red flag.)
2. Scheduled for a phone "interview," which mainly consisted of the Epic person asking me for dates of when I started/left previous jobs.
3. Flown out for an on-site cattle-call style interview. The Madison cab drivers all shake their heads at Epic candidates because there are THAT many people interviewed each week.
4. Told I would be made an offer or not in 1 week and heard back a few weeks later.
There were about 10 prospective candidates at the hotel and all of us went out to dinner with an Epic employee. This was described as a 1:1 dinner, however there wasn't really much 1:1, since there were so many of us. The Epic employee was nice and had lots of information but had a tight-lipped deer-in-the-headlights look when we asked what the formula was to get hired (It's obviously some SAT+GRE+School Ranking/age formula). Seriously, the guy looked SCARED when we asked about the formula--and we were only kind of kidding...
On site, I was asked to make a 10-minute presentation to 4 Epic employees (PowerPoint not allowed). Not a big deal. And all of my interviews went well. Most of them were the Epic employees following a script describing their jobs and/or asking the same (scripted) typical HR questions. What I found ridiculous was that they flew me out only to put me in a small, creepy office ALONE for 3 hours or so with written tests. These tests were basic math story problems, verbal (more like riddles), and programming tests. I understand that they want empirical evidence that someone is intelligent, but to anyone who is not just out of college... it is incredibly tedious and insulting. Apparently they have not heard the news in Madison that research has shown time and again that these standardized tests MEAN NOTHING. For a company that caters to evidence-based medicine... you need to revisit your tired hiring process. Bottom line: If you really want a job at Epic, get a GRE review book and familiarize yourself with those types of questions. And if you're over 30 years old, forget it. (The age rumors are most definitely true.)
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
What is something that (one of your references) would say you could improve on?
Intro zoom call, and several hours of tests on a lockdown browser before even getting to have the first ten minute phone interview. Phone interview was basically combing through my resume and any gaps.
After submitting the application, there was a personality assessment and a technical assessment to test your thinking skills. The technical assessment had 4 parts, some of which took a long time(~1.5 hours) while others were quick.
