I applied through university. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Applied Materials (Rehovot) in Aug 2011
Interview
I initially submitted my CV to the company through a jobs fair at Uni. They contacted me a month later and told me they have a position for a Physicist in a students position (part time job) in the optics department. The interview was a 1:1 Interview with the team leader in the group i was supposed to join. The interview itself was about 1.5 hours long. In the beginning I was told what the team does, in general, and what my position will consist of. I was asked to talk about my CV and previous job experiences. After that I was presented with various questions regarding optics - Describe the double slit experiment and its interference pattern, How does a laser work, A question in electromagnetic theory regarding a change in the frame of reference and a transformation of the fields. The questions tested basic physics knowledge and understanding. After the interview i was told that they would contact me in two weeks to tell me the decision. Actually, in the end they didn't contact me at all, and I heard through a friend that someone else was chosen. The rumor is that the pay is about ~23$ per hour.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
We know from elementary physics that if a point charge is moving in the X direction, in an area where there is a magnetic field in the Z direction, the charge will move in a circle because of the lorentz force. Now, lets say that the charge has zero velocity, and an observer moving in the -X direction is looking at our point charge. He will see the charge moving in the +X direction, inside the magnetic field, in a straight line. How is this possible in light of the lorentz force?