I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Garmin (Olathe, KS) in Jan 2013
Interview
Initial hiring process is started by filling an application through their online system. Even at job fairs at college and such, that's how it works. If your resume attracts attention, and they don't lose you in their paperwork (as happened to me the first time) then you get a phone interview. Having a friend on the inside to speak on your behalf can cut the change of being overlooked, since their HR hiring people are scatterbrained. If you pass the phone interview, then you are invited to Garmin for a tour, and a series of interviews with the departments looking for new hires. They ask you to bring code you have written for them to review, but only 2 out of the 10 or so people I interviewed with actually looked at it. If the general consensus among those you interview with is good, then you are offered a job. You get to choose preferences for department, and as far as I can tell, you get the most preferred department that also wanted you.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The in-person interviews at Garmin that follow the phone interview are done by engineers, and the interviews are very technical. Keep in mind that most of Garmin deals mostly in C, and plan for a technical interview accordingly. The hardest questions was probably about the minimum number of bits required to encode information about a street in a GPS system (including speed limit as a multiple of 5, up to a certain limit, and several other bits of info they give you).
You first speak to hr, talk about your resume and experience, normal stuff. The technical started off with basic hr questions and a bit about your resume and experience. Then began to ask basic OOP concepts like Polymorphism, got asked whats difference between pass by reference and pass by value, stuff like that. Then a few coding questions in python.
It was a straight forward interview process, discussed my previous experience, and some general technical questions, and did a programming exercise in a video interview.
A SQL problem and a DSA problem.
I applied online. I interviewed at Garmin (Yarmouth, ME) in Jan 2026
Interview
HR screening was pretty basic. Technical interview was done remotely. There were two people on the call beside myself. Questions were all technical and didn't bleed into any behavioral questions or assessments.
