I applied using my school's career services program for the Technical Services position. During my application, I had to take an online personality test that asked me to describe various aspects of my personality. About a week after I applied, I received a called to schedule a phone interview with an Epic employee. I was asked about some projects on my resume, my programming experience, and how I felt about living in Madison, WI. At the end of the interview, I was told I would be selected to move on to the next stage - a proctored skills exam.
About 2 weeks later, Epic sent an exam to a local testing center. Before taking it, my HR contact told me there would be programming, math and verbal sections. The exam consisted of four sections: a 2 minute math portion where you had to complete as many word problems as possible in the time allotted, a programming portion where a new language was introduced and you had to answer questions based on its rules, a "math" portion that consisted mainly of logic-type riddles, and a verbal portion where I had to fix grammar in a variety of sentences presented to me. Overall, I thought the test went just okay. I was surprised that Epic judges their candidates on how well they respond to riddles, rather than aspects of their technical competence and background. The test claims that you are being judged on speed and accuracy, so I focused equally on completing the test quickly and getting the right answers. I didn't think about some of the problems as deeply as I should have because I was under the impression that my speed would be more of a factor.
Two weeks after the test I received an email that they were moving forward with other candidates. Overall, dealing with Epic was a positive experience, but I was pretty disappointed that my hard work, good grades, and technical competence were placed as a distant second priority to how well I answered riddles. Admittedly I am just bitter because I did not perform well on the assessment, but I thought Epic's culture and the nature of the work they do was awesome, so blowing my opportunity with them is a little painful.
