Graduate Careers at Apple

As the home page of Apple’s recruitment website tells its visitors, ‘Apple jobs come in all stripes’. Jobs are separated into either corporate or retail.

Employees in Apple’s retail stores have one thing in common, they luuuuuuuuv Apple products; anyone who’s sat at a Genius Bar can testify that these guys ilive and ibreathe Apple. There are a number of different positions available within each shop including store leadership and business management positions as well as creative roles demonstrating Apple’s software.

Corporate jobs are divided into division: Mac hardware engineering, applications, marketing, operations, legal, human resources, facilities, finance, software engineering, iPhone engineering, iPod engineering, sales, information systems and technology, AppleCare and retail corporate.

While the application process varies from role to role, most corporate candidates can expect a relatively similar process. After submitting a CV and covering letter on the firm’s website, you’ll receive an initial telephone screening, perhaps followed by a second over-the-phone interview. Make an impression and you’ll be called on-site for an appraisal; this will probably last most of the day. Following this, candidates can expect anything from two to ten interviews before landing the position. Interviewers will test technical knowledge and aptitude, before quizzing candidates on their work experience with some ‘what would you do in this scenario?’ type of questions.

The lay of the land has changed somewhat in recent years. While Apple often used to hire individuals they knew in other companies, this isn’t always possible with the company growing so rapidly. For some positions, Apple will now go to agencies with a job specification and let them track down a selection of skilled and qualified candidates.

No matter how you end up in an Apple interview, make sure you demonstrate your creativity, the fact that you’re up for a challenge and, above all, your passion for its products. As Apple say themselves, ‘Less of a job, more of a calling’.

Graduate Recruitment Info

How to apply: www.apple.com/jobs/uk/startsearch.html

Apple Profile & Stats

Apple’s first logo depicted Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. But even an individual of his genius and vision could not have predicted how successful Apple would become when it released its first product in 1976: an assembled circuit board lacking even basic features such as a keyboard or monitor. Today, no matter which way you turn you can’t escape the company’s distinctive monochrome apple insignia. Whether it be through our computers, our music, our TVs or phones, Apple has seemingly infiltrated most areas of our lives. Surpassing Microsoft as the most valuable technology company in the world in 2010, Apple now employs almost 50,000 worldwide and has revenues topping $65billion.

Established by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976, Apple began by hand-building their first motherboards. The company was incorporated the following year, but without Wayne who sold his shares back to the other founders for the paltry sum of $800... ouch! By the end of the 1970s, Apple had amassed a staff of computer designers and a production line. Not all of the company’s early products were commercial successes, yet when Apple went public in 1980 it created more millionaires than any company in history – around 300. In 1984, the first Macintosh was released. Propelled by the Orwellian Nineteen Eighty-Four-esque TV advert directed by Ridley Scott, the Macintosh initially sold well. However, hindered by its high price and limited range of software titles follow-up sales were not strong.

1985 brought with it a power struggle, which resulted in founder Steve Jobs being relieved of managerial duties, consequently resigning and founding a new company, NeXT Inc. The following Job-less years saw the release of the Macintosh Portable and the PowerBook – the latter establishing the modern form factor and ergonomic layout of the laptop computer. This period between 1989 and 1991 was considered the ‘first golden age’ of Apple, but this was followed by a number of failed consumer targeted products, including digital cameras, portable CD players, speakers, video consoles and TV appliances.

After Apple bought NeXT in 1996, Steve Jobs was brought back to Apple in a consulting capacity. Upon hitting a three-year low stock price, Apple relinquished then CEO Gil Amelio of his duties and Jobs was back at the helm – albeit on what was intended as an interim basis. Jobs set straight to work restructuring the company’s product line and in 1997 he announced that Apple would join Microsoft to release new versions of Microsoft Office for the Macintosh. The iMac followed in 1998, selling 800,000 in the first five months. In the meantime, Jobs steered Apple through a series of shrewd company purchases creating a portfolio of professional and consumer-oriented digital production software – the most significant perhaps being the purchase of Macromedia’s Final Cut Pro software which has become the industry standard editing suite for the TV and film industries.

Apple opened its first official retail store in California in 2001 and in the decade since the company has expanded the chain to more than 300 shops in ten countries. In May 2001, Apple released the iconic iPod which became an overnight success. Six years on and Apple had sold more than 100 million units, helped by the release of its online music store iTunes, in 2003. Apple’s new products managed to capture the public’s imagination through a combination of intuitive usability, their sleek white polycarbonate designs – marking them out from the predominantly black products then on the market – and advertising campaigns that appealed to a young audience. Apple now commands a brand loyalty bordering on fanaticism is some cases, and the company’s store on Regent Street, London, is now the most profitable retail space in the UK.

Growing from strength to strength, the price of Apple’s stock increased tenfold between 2003 and 2006. Apple augmented this success with the release its first Intel powered laptop, the MacBook Pro. In 2010 the company released what has since become the most wanted toy by any self-respecting man, the iPad.

The fact that Apple is now so much more than just a computer company was emphasised when Jobs announced that it would drop the ‘Computer’ from Apple Computer Inc in 2007. In addition to a number of portable devices and computers, the company’s wide product range now extends to software: the Mac OS X operating system, the iTunes media browser, the Aperture photography package, the Final Cut Pro video editing suite, and Safari, the internet browser.

Considering Apple is in the business of creating so many media related products, it’s not surprising to find that the company culture bucks the corporate trend. This ethos is exemplified by the fact that even after becoming a Fortune 500 company, Steve Jobs still roved the halls of Apple’s Californian HQ barefoot. It is the fostering of this sort of individuality and freedom of expression that has helped Apple to differentiate itself from its competitors and rise to the top of the tree.