The overall interview process was extremely disorganized. While I enjoyed getting to meet some of the folks that work there, you can immediately see they have personality traits that are akin to their ages. One interviewer would constantly cut me off mid-sentence while I was responding to one of his questions. Another interviewer had no idea about simple financial metrics like 'contra', etc. Overall it was an interesting atmosphere with a extremely disorganized recruiting process that led me to turning down the offer.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Excel can sort numbers from ascending to descending and vice versa. How do you think excel calculates this?
15 minute phone interview with a current Financial Analyst. Pretty straightforward questions like 1) Why do you want to work at Palantir, 2) Tell me about your leadership experience, etc..
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
If I told you $10M was spent on travel with $4M to Recruiting, $2M to Engineering, and $4M to Business Development, what is your initial reaction?
I applied through university. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Palantir Technologies
Interview
I talked to one of their employee at a career fair. I received an email 2 weeks later despite the fact I didn't apply online. We scheduled an on-phone interview that lasted for 15 minutes. After 3 days, I got an email saying that I'm fit for the job.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What information will you ask to provide an analysis of outstanding accounts.
I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Palantir Technologies (Palo Alto, CA) in Nov 2012
Interview
After applying online, I received an inviatation to do a phone interview within a few weeks. Following the initial phone interview I was given a second phone interview. Both of these were a half an hour in length and very straight-forward. Bascially standard 1st round resume questions ("why do you want to work at Palantir?", talk about your experience doing x/y/z, ask them some questions).
A few weeks later I was invited out to Palo Alto to interview in person. I interviewed with 5 people in the morning (all for 30 minutes, except for the lunch interview) and then was given a product demo. The in-person interviews were basically the same "resume-type" interviews that I did over the phone. Only during the lunch inbterview did I receive one market-sizing question. As others have suggested, I did not meet the founders and did not receive an offer.
Overall, I would say the experience was generally enjoyable (nice people, great accomodations for on-site interviews, etc.), but certainly drawn-out. It probably took more than two months from the time I applied to my in-person interview.
The other critque of the process is that in many ways the interviews are "too easy". I have no idea how they make informed hiring decisions for business positions based on "tell me about yourself?" questions and one 10-minute case-type question.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How would you estimate the number of X in the world?