The screening interviewer for this media processor group was a shady, Indian, H1B guy from Texas. He's not the hiring manager but kept asking illegally about my compensation expectation and whether I would be willing to relocate to a different location than the primary job location in Santa Clara, CA. I answered all the technical questions properly but never heard from Qualcomm again. It baffled me about being ghosted without any updates but then I realize that this guy's intent was to block better candidates from joining his group in order to protect his position and job security at Qualcomm. This behavior of working against his employer's interests was unfortunate and unethical but happened since one's case can be easily lost in the pool of candidates without management or HR being able to check or audit it.

I applied online and was invited to a one-hour interview with a panel consisting of 2–3 engineers and the hiring manager. The interview began with an introduction to the role, followed by general questions about my background and motivation for applying. It then moved on to technical questions focused on Verilog and UVM.