Thanks for this answer! That's all I needed to know. I am curious, why did you leave employment?
For me, Apple was a PT job that I did for fun, in addition to my FT job. I'm squeezed for time this summer, and leaving Apple was the easiest way to free up some time. I'd go back in a heartbeat, though!
I applied once to work at an Apple Store, but there were about 75 people there for the hiring event, and they never gave anyone an opportunity to prove themselves... we all just sat there and watched videos, and the kids with the "hippest" hairdo's got hired. Maybe that was just my store, but the hiring process is WHACKED. Not just because I didn't get the job, but they didn't even really get enough information to make any real decision.
Crap, 75 people?!? My store was a smaller store, so the hiring events were only like 10-15 people. The managers encouraged us (regular employees) to attend the events and get to know the people. We'd then give our feedback back to the managers, who'd add it to theirs, and then bring people back for additional one-on-one interviews (which is where they got additional information).
The process worked OK for our store, but our staff was already diverse. I mean, age was skewed mostly younger -- I'd guess 70% college-aged, but the rest of the staff went from there up until their late 50s. But everything else (nationality, religion, sexuality, personal style) was totally diverse. So the input that managers got from the hiring events was just as diverse.
I could see where a store comprised of mostly folks with the same look could end up hiring more of the same look, though.
Apple Store employees appear to be paid models to maintain a very specific image
Definitely no specific image in our store. I mean, there'd be a random shift that'd have *the* 8 emo folks (out of a staff of ~90) working, so if you walked in then, I see how you could think that. But if you saw our store during a quarterly meeting where everyone was there, it's diverse enough, you wouldn't even guess that 75% of them even worked for Apple. The only image our store went for was 'friendly'. They didn't care what your personal style or haircut was.
As for the Genius thing, most customers (that provide an email address) get an email asking them to rate their visit to the Genius Bar. My store's mgmt was very good about tracking those responses, and if a clear pattern began showing that one of the Geniuses was having problems, they'd deal with it.
The store I worked at was consistently rated well by the customers (for the Genius Bar, the sales folks, and the One-to-One trainers). Weekly, we were always in the top 5 of our market, which was around 30 stores. Made me wonder what the hell was going on with some of the other stores.
