Blizzard Entertainment Systems Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

I sent in my application for a summer 2017 internship back in November 2016. A recruiter got in touch towards the end of January to set up the initial phone interview. It went pretty well, and the recruiter seemed happy with my responses. They mentioned scheduling a technical interview for 'sometime next week.' However, three weeks passed, and I still hadn't heard anything, despite sending two follow-up emails. I finally got a reply with an apology for the delay, saying they were still working with the technical team to set it up. That was the last I heard from that recruiter. I sent a few more follow-ups weekly. Another month went by before I received a standard rejection email from a different Blizzard hiring address. I'm not totally sure what happened, but I get that they must deal with a huge number of applications, so I understand that things can get missed. I'm still keen to give it another shot this year.

So the interview process was pretty interesting, I met some really cool people but it was ultimately kind of a letdown. It started with good communication but then really fell apart. I had a phone interview with the hiring manager and then got invited to a Skype interview pretty quickly. The problem was, it was going to be weeks before that second interview could happen because of holidays and vacations. The Skype interview went okay, though the first part felt a bit shaky and uncoordinated, maybe because of the bad video and audio quality. The later rounds were better. They said I'd hear back in a week or two because they wanted to hire fast. That's when communication really went south. The recruiter left, and the handover to the new recruiter was apparently messy. After trying to reach someone in HR, I finally got a generic email from the new recruiter saying I didn't get the job. I was hoping for more details, especially feedback from the hiring manager like I was promised, but never got it. It was a long process and a bummer, but it was cool to get the chance. Even with the process issues, the people, especially the managers, were fantastic.

The whole thing took about a month, with several interviews, starting with a recruiter and going up to a Director in my area. Everyone I spoke with was really smart, nice, and easy to talk to. It felt pretty high-stakes because the job is so sought-after, but the people there are really grounded and relatable, which made a big difference. It was probably the toughest interview I've ever done, but honestly, it was also the most enjoyable.