I was contacted by an Epic recruiter saying they saw my resume through my university's resume book. In every stage of the process, I had a very receptive point of contact with HR that would respond to any questions I had within an hour of emailing. The time between each step for me was 24-48 hours, but I don’t think that’s incredibly standard. All my interactions with Epic HR and the employees during my visit to HQ were incredibly smooth and informative--- they really made a big effort to make a great impression.
There are 5 steps to Epic's interview process:
1. Application
For this you just submit your resume and contact information on a basic web-page. They don't make you answer any questions about yourself and it's just about 5 boxes of information to fill out. They give you the option to submit unofficial transcripts and a cover letter, but I didn't submit either and it wasn't an issue.
2. Phone Interview
In this step, you just get to talk to an Epic employee. Instead of the usual HR person, the conversation is with someone who has previously held the position you’re applying for. I got to talk to someone who’d been in the TS role for 3 years and she gave me a basic overview of the position. It was a good opportunity to start thinking about if the position was a good fit for me. They do ask some questions about you and why you’re interested in Epic, but nothing too intense.
3. Skills Assessment
This step seems like the one that filters most applicants out. All of the following assessments are proctored by a remote agency.
There’s an ACT/SAT type test that determines your ability to think logically and do math. There’s a couple really time restricted sections to assess speed. Overall if you have done well on previous standardized tests there should be nothing to worry about.
The second part of the skills assessment is a basic coding test. You don’t need to know any CS going in---the test gives you all the information you need to answer the questions, but you need to be able to interpret what they’re saying. You’re given unlimited time to do this test, but the proctor says that time to complete is a factor considered by Epic.
4. Final Interview
For this step, Epic brings you out to Madison, WI and gives you plenty of opportunities to see if the company is a good cultural fit for you. There’s a lot that Epic does differently from the rest of the business world and being able to physically experience it is definitely very important to know if it’s a good fit. If you’ve made it this far, its seemingly on you to mess up to not get the job--- for the whole 6 hour day they have planned for you, the only assessment relevant to you getting hired or not is a 30 minute case study. The day includes a company overview, a talk with someone who’s held your position of interest for 10+ years, a tour of the campus, lunch with an employee, a case study, a talk with HR about your day, and then a coding assessment.
My HR representative told me that the coding assessment isn’t really something they consider when deciding whether to hire you but instead it’s like an entry level test to see how much they’re going to have to teach you and what kind of curriculum to give you if they hire you. You can use any language of your choice and if you aren’t comfortable with syntax on any language, you’re allowed to write pseudo-code in English.
5. Offer
For this stage, Epic threw me a bit of a curve ball and offered me the choice between TS or their integration engineering position. Their decision to offer choices between positions seems to hinge on what you say during your HR interview--- mostly just interests and technical ability. After making a choice on position, it’s straight -forward to accepting and becoming an official employee.
