Want to Get Hired by Apple? Get Ready for a Nine Month Interview Process and Working on Fake Products

Here’s a fun little tidbit from a talk by Adam Lashinsky, author of Inside Apple, at LinkedIn’s headquarters. In it, Lashinsky and a member of the audience shoot back and forth about Apple’s rigorous interview process, which can last up to nine months or longer. They also touched on how Apple is able to maintain its (nearly) impenetrable veil of secrecy, a big part of which is hiring people they can trust. “But how does one prove their trustworthiness to Apple?” I hear you cry. By working on fake products.

We haven’t had the chance to read Lashinsky’s book, but it’s by all accounts an accurate portrayal of what it’s like inside one of the world’s most successful companies. During the LinkedIn appearance, a former Apple engineer is quoted by Business Insider as saying:

A friend of mine who’s a senior engineer at Apple, he works on — or did work on — fake products I’m sure for the first part of his career, and interviewed for 9 months. It’s intense.

There’s not a lot of discussion about what these fake products might entail, but it does occur to me that this practice might explain the ocassional bizarre leaks that sometimes come out of Apple. Nano iPhones, plus-sized iPads, etc., etc..

As someone who has observed Apple from a far, and has been a happy user of their products, I have to admit that I never imagined Apple would go as far as to deceive its own employees. One wonders what other tactics the company uses to keep their secrets secret. Ye gods.

(via Business Insider, image via our collection of fake iPhone 5 concepts)

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