Application process for Software Engineering Placement at Arm

Arm
Placement
4
stage
s
Leyan Tong

Online Application

This process is very straightforward. ARM only requires you to submit a CV and answer some simple personal information questions, such as education and address.

Expect a 2-week wait before progressing to the next stage.

Virtual Interview 1

For this stage, you will be asked to reply to a set of questions that are presented in the text on the screen. You will have 30 seconds to read and think about the question and 3 minutes to record your answer. This in total took around 70 minutes to complete.

Example task

The first half of the questions were behavioural, asking to introduce yourself and other questions such as: “Describe an experience you had of solving a problem”. The second half of the questions were much more technical but still fairly basic. For example, Leyan was asked to describe the difference between CPU and GPU.

Expect a 2-day wait before progressing to the next stage.

Virtual Interview 2

After the interview questions, you will be given an easy to medium difficulty problem to solve using the C language. This will be in an online coding platform. This section is timed to 45 minutes, but this may vary.

Example task

The problem Leyan was given was arranging two sets of numbers into 2 different lists, SOP and EOP, where the sum of all the numbers correlated to a particular formula. You must develop a program that abides by the given rules in the most efficient way.

How to respond for success

For the interview, ARM uses AI to track your tone of voice, eye movement and hand gestures. Make sure you pretend that you are speaking to a person. This may be uncomfortable, but this stage of the process is designed to test your character and interaction. Keep eye contact with the camera, speak in a calm tone and be as engaging as possible.

Expect a 1-week wait before progressing to the next stage.

Final Interview

This stage was around 1 hour with an interviewer who is a Senior in ARM, Cambridge office. They will ask basic questions, similar to that of the virtual interview, as well as a live coding session.

Example task

The interviewer may ask questions like, “Describe an experience which is mentioned on your CV, which demonstrates leadership”. Another would be more situational, such as; “If a fellow team member was struggling to understand a concept in a project, what would you do”.

The more technical questions required you to have an understanding of databases and how languages are used. An example question would be: “What is the different application of SQL vs MongoDB”. ​

Live Coding Session

This stage is very similar to the virtual interview, where the problem was easier. Here your interviewer will view your progress live, and offer help and advice as you code. This stage is designed to understand your thought process and communication skills.

How to respond for success

Leyan used leetcode to practice her coding tests as well as watching YouTube channels like TechLead to see what the coding tests are like for other applicants.  

Example

How to respond for success

Online test

Example

How to respond for success

HireVue

There was one online test. It contains a bunch of questions with scenarios and it took in total 1.5 hours to complete.

Example

There was one online test. It contains a bunch of questions with scenarios and it took in total 1.5 hours to complete.

How to respond for success

There was one online test. It contains a bunch of questions with scenarios and it took in total 1.5 hours to complete.

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