I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 1+ week. I interviewed at Illumina (San Francisco, CA) in Aug 2015
Interview
After I my resume was submitted by a staffing agency, I heard back about a week later that Illumina was interested and would like to conduct a phone screen. Several days later, I had a 30 minute phone interview with two lead scientists on the team during which they asked mostly technical questions pertaining to my qualifications, followed by an immediate invitation for an in person interview. The next week I was in for a 3 hour intensive in-person interview: one hour with different members of the team. The first hour was the most technical in which I described in detail my qualifications based on past experience, the second hour more behavioral and me explaining why I wanted the position and would be a great fit. The last half hour was less intense as I asked most of the questions.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Technical questions:
What is p-value and how do you calculate it?
Describe the sequencing pipeline from end to end.
Be able to explain past projects with full technical detail.
Behavioral/work history questions:
Be prepared to explain clearly any gaps or overlap in your resume between positions.
Explain a time when you clashed with a coworker and how did you resolve it.
Applied through a recruiting agency. They set up a phone interview with a scientist on the team, which lasted around 45 minutes. Asked a lot of technical and some behavioral questions.
I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Illumina (San Diego, CA) in Jan 2019
Interview
Long interview process, 2+ months. Interview process starts with the video interview. As described in many reviews here, it’s a recorded interview of several questions that you have limited time to prepare or answer. That aspect I do not mind, if it’s to weed out unqualified candidates, that is fair. However, if all it is doing is scanning for key words and not actually reviewed by HR or the Hiring Manager, I take issue with this as I feel some questions were so specific, you just got free legal advice.
I felt the recruiters were extremely disorganized. I told them from the start I had competing offers, this was not shared with the Hiring Manager (which was obvious during the F2F interview), salary and comp was discussed early on and Illumina tried to cap salary and benefits weeks before the F2F interviews. I explained that my range was X-X and their max offer was not competitive and I was still brought in to interview which I took to mean they were flexible on their max offer. Piece of advice to your comp team, the cost of living in San Diego is not that much less to other major markets to justify such low base/bonus and RSU’s.
After a full day of interviews and a week delay before any feedback, I was told I did not get the job which in my opinion was because they clearly didn’t want to pay for my expertise but hope to find someone cheaper (job is already reposted). The feedback given for their decision was not truthful as I have significant experience in my field of expertise.
My advice to anyone interviewing, don’t bother going through the process if you know early on that their salary offer won’t meet your expectations. I could have saved myself 2 months had I stated don’t interview me if you can’t meet my comp demand. In the end, I got an offer of $40K+ base, 5%+ bonus and $175K+ RSU above Illumina’s max offer from another company who was willing to pay for the expertise I have.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me something you think is your biggest accomplishment and why?
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Illumina
Interview
The interview took a total of 4 hours. 30 minute one on ones with each team member. They asked mostly about day to day work, how I helped optimize and troubleshoot protocols in my previous positions.
