It feels a little unreal that almost three weeks ago I was embarking on one of the most interesting experiences that I've ever had. Three weeks ago I was planning to head to NYC to visit a friend for a few days when I got an email from a company I had applied to basicly on a whim - I had a group interview that weekend and a personal interview later that week. I was struck - this was something I had applied to weeks ago and almost completely forgotten about. It was an amazing chance and I had only received an email. This was Apple.
I questioned what I could and couldn't say throughout the process and even asked myself if it was wise to publish it at all. Eventually, I caved in and wrote two parts of a three-part 'series' that I wanted to release over a period of three days. It relied very heavily on an abolsute positive or negative outcome - either I did or I didn't get the job for the third part. When the time came, the outcome became more complex and didn't fit with the rest of the piece and so I decided to try and rewrite things...
I think it's safe to say that a Mac Genius position is the hardest one-step position to get at a retail Apple Store. Regardless, I went to the first group interview with my aim high. Out of the 12 of us, I was the youngest there by 3 years, at least. We were just one group of three so I assumed there were ~36 people total that were working for these 4 Genius positions. We gathered after the store closed and were asked as a group why we wanted to be Mac Genii and why we felt we were qualified for the job. We were then allowed to ask questions about the position before we took a short test on some really basic Mac problems and questions. I felt like I did a good job on the test - I left one question blank that was very specific but other than that, I felt I got the rest of them right. I waited until the end of the week when I was called back for my personal interview which went very well. I was told that I would get a call within a week and a half and that they might ask me to come in for another interview or to offer me a job. Needless to say, when I got a call not more than a week later asking me to come back in, I was excited.
I am fairly capable with a Mac. I really only dealt with computers in school until 5th grade when my parents got a Performa 6800CD for our house and it became a staple of my daily routine. Before that I was playing with ancient SE30s and Pluses - this was an amazing upgrade for me. I'l admit it, after really sitting down and learning this computer and doing the internet thing and figuring out how things in the Mac-vs-PC (at the time, IBM) world worked, I was a Mac zealot for a while. This changed when I was offered a 450Mhz PC, a lower-middle range computer at the time, and with my only other option being my then-antiquated 100Mhz Performa, I accepted. Eventually, I was quite the PC person as well. I realized I could no longer hold my strictly anti-PC standards and dropped the zealot routine. I was now a multi-platform person but my loyalties were still with Apple. Eventually, I was able to pick up a 300Mhz iBook for school. Since then, I've built my own PC and countless others. I've installed 10.2 on my 300Mhz iBook which runs, although slowly at times. I kept up on news and features and played with newer machines when I could. I am a confident Mac user and I consider myself as good as any other Mac user when it comes to tech support since I had worked for three years at a K-12 school.
A three hour train ride in to NYC later, I was getting a bad feeling - I had been put off for almost 15 minutes and while I understood that customers were more important, I didn't see my interviewer around and that made me nervous. Eventually, I was escorted downstairs and was given a mini interview and then a short explaination of 'why' this decision was made which was repeated at me about 5 times before I was finially given my decision. I had an excellent interview, he said, but my test score was lower than he would have liked and he wanted to offer me a part time job at a position other than the Genius bar for the moment. He reiterated that half of the current Genii were promotions from this type of part time work and that it was definitely a possibility for my direction. I wasn't exactly stunned given my intuition for the past 20 minutes but it was not what I was expecting on the whole. I was given a timetable to decide and sent on my way some 45 minutes after I had arrived with not much else to do but take a 3 hour train ride home. Let me assure you, a long train ride after something like this is no fun.
I really can't argue about the decision - I was given an offer to work at the Apple Store. I was defeated for the moment - I'm living in Philadelphia at the moment and a full time job would have allowed me to move to NYC with the least amount of problems. A part time job means that I had to find a second job to work until I was (possibly) offered a full time job there and that is where the difficulty lies. By the time I was home, things were looking up slightly - I was offered a job at the Apple Store! It still bothered me a little that my test score wasn't good - I didn't want to contest it at the time, I figured it would seem like a desperate thing to do and that's not what I wanted to be.

I suppose the thing that disappointed me most was the interview process itself. I was interviewing to work for Apple, the champion of breaking the mold, and it was a really typical interview process and what's more, I was evaluated by way of a paper test. Perhaps I was being a little too idealistic to hope for something more. A creative way to evaluate my skill or test me that I didn't get. Regardless, I'm happy with the outcome and I'm still working on different ways that I can work out living in NYC. I haven't yet taken the job but I hope to in the next week. Hopefully, I'll have a story of moving to NYC to tell soon enough.