Cree has four stages to their interview process. First step is the questionnaire that you have to send back to HR within a three day window. Questions are behavioral and also ask you about technical experiences you have. Expected salary that you put down on questionnaire will likely be used against you if you get an offer. If they like your questionnaire, you'll get an email from the hiring manager for a phone interview. They asked a lot of technical questions about what LED lights are and about your previous responsibilities. Interviewer wasn't super friendly, but liked that I asked a lot of questions. If they like your interview then, you get invited to prepare a 30 minute skype interview on your responsibilities on your last job. Again, they ask a lot of questions and can come off as questioning your abilities but they are just trying to see how you react to that sort of stuff. If you know your stuff and are confident in your presentation, you'll be fine. They ask the tough questions, so being able to handle the questions is key in this stage. Fourth and final step is an in person interview to their location, which in my case was Durham. They pay for flight and hotel, and were very nice about paying for me to stay an extra day to explore the city. I was asked to present the same presentation to a slate of people, and then one on one interviews with that same slate of people for the rest of the day. What they do at Cree is they are intentionally cold and somewhat rude to you throughout the interview process in order to see how you react to things. For instance, during the one on one interviews I would shake their hand and ask them how they are doing, and they wouldn't make eye contact with me and give a cold response like "fine". During 1on1 stage, they ask a lot of technical questions on your presentation to see how you think, I didn't get any of the brain quiz questions like the "how tall would you be if your atoms were made of tennis balls" that other people did. One guy really grilled me on Cree's product line and acted like he was disgusted and insulted that I didn't look through their product catalogs and didn't know more products than different types of LED lights. After three one on one interviews, they took me out for lunch at a brazilian steakhouse. I think they just try to throw you off with weird food/environments, they told me they usually like to get indian food for lunch with interviewees. They asked me some questions about myself at lunch, a weird amount of questions about what my ideal job would be, what other companies I've applied to. I asked questions about the 50+ hour work week, and they acted like I was incredibly naive to think that anyone works less hours than that.
I was cut right after lunch while waiting for my next interview after lunch, told I wasn't a good fit for the company because of my concerns to work. They told me that Cree has a very particular environment that is very fast paced and requires a great deal of work and commitment and that they didn't think I would fit well in that. I think what they wanted was someone that would want to be there for 50+ hours and have no reservations about it, and they could tell I did have some reservations. It's kind of a curse to read the Glassdoor interview reviews and company reviews for this company, because if you have any sort of reservations about this company they will sense that and get rid of you. And after reading the Glassdoor for Cree I most certainly had reservations, even though I went into the interview knowing I would accept an offer from them. Overall, they do a very thorough job of vetting their employees, and will draw heavy conclusions based on your answers to simple questions. Also, contrary to popular to company reviews not all entry level engineering positions work the second shift (2pm-12am), I was told this job was one that would be 8-6. In retrospect, I really wish I was more enthusiastic for this position. Don't believe all of the company reviews you read!!