I did two interviews for Lutron. The first was after I met a representative at a campus career fair - he interviewed me the next day. This interview was somewhat challenging but nothing crazy. It was heavy on manufacturing and solid mechanics knowledge, and I was asked some of the basics of stress and strain as well as open-ended questions on how I might choose to manufacture certain objects around the office. The interviewer was nice and I was invited back to a second round. The second round was at their headquarters in Coopersburg, PA (was driven there by a hired car and given a hotel room for the night). I was with a group of other interviewees and they took us on a tour of some facilities before settling down for a pretty lengthy interview process. This series of interviews was extremely difficult. There were a great number of deeply technical questions, several of which were beyond my knowledge. The most unusual interview was a "role-play", where I was asked to pretend to be a Lutron employee on his first day at the office. Two interviewers posed as various people I came in contact with on this first day, in which I was given an assignment (to figure out what was wrong with a product that was receiving complaints). I was allowed to "walk around the office and speak to colleagues", to "phone our customers and suppliers", etc. I have to commend the interviewers for their acting skills as they brought some personality to the various roles they played, including some very angry and uncooperative "customers". It was quite strange altogether and I didn't really enjoy any of this, though I should emphasize that the interviewers themselves were always polite and treated me well. It was just hard and very unexpected to be asked to do these sorts of things. I did not end up getting an offer, which came as no surprise after how it went. I know someone who did get an offer though, and it was clear that the company takes great care in selecting its employees and interacts on a very personal level with you if you impress them in the second round. I suppose this method works for them.

Interview was around 1 hour long and, although it was not mentioned before, was a technical interview. The interview itself was relatively candid and a pleasant experience. It involved drawing on a digital whiteboard and answering engineering-related questions.