I graduated from school in May 2010 with the intention of starting my own company. My parents had other ideas and asked me to apply to IBM. We had a family friend who worked there for years and it had been brought to his attention that IBM was re-implementing their University hiring program. Our family friend gave me the name of one of the hiring managers within the program. I emailed him and heard back the next day; he gave me the directions for applying on ibm.com and put me in touch with an IBM recruiter who handled the hiring process. The application process on ibm.com is extensive; there are about 7 pages of questions to answer, you upload your resume and consent to a background check. The process took me over an hour to complete (as compared to other jobs that took 5 minutes to apply for online). I had my first interview via the phone the first week of June 2010 (about 2 weeks after first making contact with IBM). It was less of an interview and more of a 'getting to know you' conversation. We talked sports, it was nice. The following week I had two more phone interviews very similar to the first one. The phone interviews were very informal and casual - more 'getting to know you' conversations. On that note: IBM is just as concerned with the character of their employees as the knowledge of their employees. This part of the interviewing process was IBM's way of grading my character and personality - which is a test you must pass before even being allowed to show them how smart you are. A week after the phone interviews, I traveled to St. Louis for a one on one interview with my hiring manager and then had a panel interview with his team. This part of the interviewing process was difficult. The entire interview took over 4 hours; which in my experience is extremely lengthy. I was asked many relevant, critical thinking questions. IBM was good about staying in contact with me even though they didn't extend an offer immediately. I received a call mid-July with my job offer from IBM. I accepted immediately as the offer was more than acceptable and much more than I was expecting to make my first year out of college.