Starkey Interview Questions
& Process

So first, you show up at the factory, then we run through a quick safety rundown. After that, you'll do this hands-on thing where you put parts together, and we'll see how you do with the clock ticking. The supervisors will be watching for how careful you are and if you can work with others. We'll then have a brief chat about stuff like being dependable, if you can work different shifts, and how you'd fix issues when things are moving fast and you gotta do the same thing over and over.

I applied for the role and was quickly contacted for an initial phone interview, which went well. Next, I had a video call interview where the HR manager assured me I would be contacted regardless of the decision. After three follow-ups, I had to withdraw my application before Starkey finally informed me that I wasn't selected. The outcome itself isn't the main issue; the experience was disappointing, especially since 'kindness' was highlighted as a core Starkey value, but it seems to be applied selectively. I've been ghosted before, but never after two interviews.

The interview process had two rounds. The first round was a technical interview with the hiring manager. The second round consisted of four 45-minute interviews with the team members. The interviews covered typical embedded systems and Bluetooth-related topics.

So, I had this interview process that had six parts. First, there was an initial HR call, which was super chill. We just talked about the company, the job, and why I thought I'd be a good fit. Then, there was a technical interview with two senior engineers where they mostly dug into my resume and we talked a lot about my past research. They were really knowledgeable, it was a good chat. After that, there was this online assessment, an hour long. It had personality questions, some reasoning, and basic math problems. Honestly, I thought it was totally unnecessary, especially since I have a PhD in engineering and they asked me stuff like 'What is 2 - 4/3?'. The personality part was also kinda vague and not that insightful, in my opinion. The big one was the whole-day interview. It started with me giving a 60-minute presentation about my past work, then I had several one-on-one chats with senior engineers and managers, some from the team, some from other parts of the company. The questions mainly revolved around my research and industry challenges. I actually enjoyed it, the people were super smart. They offered to fly me out, but I did it all online because of personal reasons. A couple days after that, I had a 30-minute call with the VP of Advanced Development. It was a smooth conversation, mostly high-level stuff about AI's role in the industry and how I could add value to their team. The last step was talking to their immigration specialist about work permits and visas. They figured out they'd need to hire me in my current country for a year before I could relocate. Then, after two weeks of radio silence, they told me they wanted someone on-site at their headquarters and weren't moving forward with my application. This was a huge bummer for two reasons: they initially said remote work was an option and I could relocate later, and if being on-site was a hard requirement, they should have made that clear with the immigration person much earlier instead of wasting my time with hours of interviews and discussions only to reject me based on immigration stuff. The technical team was great and professional, but the whole experience got messed up by really poor communication about whether the job was remote or in-person.