The interview had 3 stages, an initial phone interview during which I was asked technical questions. Then I was invited to a 2nd interview consisting of presentation on a project followed by a lot of technical questions. I was never asked a single question about my CV, or any competency questions at any stage.
For the 3rd interview, I was given a chance to use their software and prepare two presentation on 2 tasks. I was expecting the final presentation to be based on presentation skills and being able to give COMSOL inductions, but again the questions were on the technical side, and not sure what the point of the presentations were. Total waste of time and energy and I was not prepared for that. Whenever I hesitated on one question asked by one person, another person would jump in (perhaps trying to help) and they would confuse me even more and did not give me a chance to think at all. One interviewer in particular definitely did not have interpersonal skills. Even after it was obvious that I was going to fail the 3rd interview, he just kept asking question only to humiliate me. He was a bully in many ways. I could not even answer simple questions (some of which I had answer in previous stages) after I found out they were asking me technical questions again. I regret not walking out as soon as I found out especially as I had decided to accept another offer from a different company. Expectedly from their culture they did not contact me to let me know the outcome.
First round was a screening round. In the second round, a set of questions were given and then I was asked to send the answers in 24 hours. My answers were discussed later in an interview.
I applied online. I interviewed at COMSOL (Los Angeles, CA) in Oct 2023
Interview
interview with hiring manager as well as director.
Never got back to me and when I followed up within the timeline they discussed didn't respond
received a typical hr email 3 weeks later
I applied online. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at COMSOL (Burlington, MA) in Dec 2022
Interview
First round video call interview Second round on-site research presentation and technical questions. Research presentation is about 20 minutes. Technical questions are mostly about the Galerkin FEM and numerical analysis in general. They did a great job of asking questions about my research too.
Applications Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at COMSOL with 2.8 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 67% positive. To compare, the company-average is 43.5% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Applications Engineer roles take an average of 38 days to get hired, when considering 9 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at COMSOL overall takes an average of 50 days.
Common stages of the interview process at COMSOL as a Applications Engineer according to 9 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 23%
Presentation: 19%
Group panel interview: 15%
Skills test: 15%
One on one interview: 15%
Background check: 12%
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