Cochlear Interview Questions
& Process

The recruitment process was extremely slow, taking a long time to get to the interview stage. I got other offers while waiting. Even after the interview, I never heard back, not even a rejection after months, which made their communication process seem bad. The interview itself felt like a guessing game because a senior engineer asked a networking question with unclear wording, and then immediately gave the answer without letting me ask clarifying questions. I knew the answer if it had been worded correctly. Based on the slow communication and the interview panel, the culture seemed bureaucratic and not very supportive of interns. I decided to look elsewhere and won't apply for their graduate program.

It was 3 rounds of interviews total, the 4th would be the offer if you get the positive feedback. Every round was with a different stakeholder and they asked lots of practical questions that are related to the PO role itself to verify the experience. Very friendly interviewers, well-structured sessions and very quick results after the interview sessions.

It felt a bit off. After I spoke with HR, they sent me a case study and asked me to make a powerpoint in 48 hours about how I'd handle the situation, giving options and recommendations. I sent it back before the deadline. A day after it was due, I asked the HR rep if they got it and what was next. They said they got it and would let me know if they wanted to interview me. I waited a few days and followed up again at the end of the week. Nothing back - they ghosted me. This was over 6 weeks ago. They reposted the job about 3 weeks later. I was already suspicious when they gave me a written assessment after just a screening call, before any actual interview. My suspicion grew when they ghosted me after the presentation. I really think this company uses candidates to get free ideas for their problems.

While the interviewer and I initially got along, it became increasingly clear that there is no work-life balance at this company. This isn't necessarily a dealbreaker but the way that the interviewer approached the topic was increasingly unsettling. Questions like "you understand this job is salaried and you won't receive overtime, right?" and "how often do you unexpectedly need time off" came up. For my part I made it clear that I didn't have a lot of commitments outside of work and didn't have qualms about working late on occasion but the interviewer kept circling back to this in a way that had me questioning if I would have any time outside of work. One example of this is a pretty standard interview question "What do you do when you may not be able to complete multiple tasks before the end of the day?" My response had to do with prioritizing based on business impact to which the interviewer responded, "most of the time we just have to stay late into the evening in order to get everything done." Overall this felt like less of an interview and more of a disclaimer that Cochlear was less interested in how candidates handle tasks and more fixated on whether or not they were essentially on-call. I've held jobs like this before, and while a 50-60 hour workweek every other month isn't an issue, I've worked at enough terrible companies to recognize when an employer aims to take advantage of salaried positions to task one employee with the same the same amount of work as multiple people.