HRL Laboratories Scientist Interview Questions
& Process

Make sure you know all of your experiences and projects really well. Expect to be asked in-depth questions about each related experience and project. You should have a solid grasp of CNN architecture.

I was first contacted by a recruiter on LinkedIn and after sending my resume, I heard back from the ISSL team about a month later via email to set up an initial interview. This was a video call with about 6 team members where they asked me high-level questions about my research. A couple weeks later, they emailed again to schedule a full interview, which was a full day. Although it's usually on-site, it was over video call because of the pandemic. I started by meeting with HR to talk about benefits. Then, I gave a 1-hour presentation about my research. After that, it was just a series of 30-minute meetings for 7 hours, with a short break for lunch. Some meetings were one-on-one and others had two people, mostly research scientists from ISSL, and a few higher-up executives. The whole process was pretty relaxed and enjoyable, with people asking genuine questions about my research and nothing too difficult. It's a bit draining to have so many back-to-back meetings, especially on video, as you can't take breaks to walk between rooms and just jump from one call to the next. But I had many enjoyable conversations and the interview actually convinced me to seriously consider taking a job there, as everyone seemed happy working there.

It started with a 30-45 minute call with some technical folks. Then, it was basically a full day interview where I had to give a presentation and meet with most of the group members. No HR call upfront, which was nice. Everyone was friendly and asked good questions during my talk.