I applied to the security consultant role sometime in October of 2017, in December 2017 I received an email to schedule a phone interview with an MWR employee. The phone interview was pretty straight forward and basic, basic networking and security questions.
After that I was given a 72 hour capture the flag challenge, which I completed in full. This challenge was somewhat difficult, but was more time consuming than anything. Sometime in January of 2018 I was offered to interview in person at their NYC location, over six hours away from my current location. This is where the negative aspects of the company became readily apparent. The HR representative I was in contact with was located in the UK, and was consistently unable to be contacted after noon during any business day. I would regularly receive emails at 3-4AM, I later found out that the NYC location did not have an onsite HR department. The UK-based HR rep also seemed to have no concept that I lived over six hours away, and even said that "the company usually reserves Skype interviews for non-local candidates." Not wanting to mess-up what I thought was this amazing opportunity, I stupidly made the 12-hour round trip drive to the NYC location, and paid $50 to park my car for the day. Everyone I met with at the MWR location in NYC was incredibly nice and pleasant, and I have nothing negative to say about them. However, upon arriving I was immediately given a half hour paper IQ test, followed directly by a half hour paper computer security test. The computer security test covered an incredibly wide range of topics and questions, everything from Mobile Security to spotting the vulnerability in some C code of a program.
After these tests completed, I spent the next hour answering increasingly difficult technical from the two interviewers; these questions ranged from Cryptography, to networking, to Operating System specific vulnerabilities, to Web-based vulnerabilities, to mobile vulnerabilities, to almost anything that could have possibly related to Computer Security. I was asked no personality/culture-based questions, they were strictly interested in my technical ability, and could not have cared less if I was culturally fit for the company.
Just to recap, at this point I had completed: a technical phone interview, a 72 hour technical CTF challenge, a 12 hour round trip drive, an IQ test, a technical Computer Security test, and an hour long panel-style interview.
At 9AM the morning following my interview I received an email from an HR representative in the UK stating that "I did not have a real passion for cybersecurity" and was declined from the position. I was never compensated for my 12 hour round trip drive or parking fees.
As a recent college graduate I was declined from plenty of positions before landing my current position, but I have to say that this experience stuck with me so negatively that it inspired me to make a glassdoor account and leave this review. I learned some valuable lessons through this interview process,and I was sure to never make those same mistakes again. My recommendation to anyone interviewing at MWR is to not put in any unnecessary money/time into the interview process, as the company will not return the same grace to you.