I applied through an employee referral. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at MITRE (Colorado Springs, CO) in May 2009
Interview
The interview was really painless -- many of the people at the company had already known me for a long time and I was asked to submit a resume and application when they found out I was ready to change employers and career directions. I had a 1:1 interview but it really consisted more of the "interviewer" talking to me about the company, how it was structured, how positions were graded and then asking me some questions about salary and work expectations.
I already had an excellent view of the people, office and work culture as I'd worked or associated with many people from the company for years. One of the main reasons I interviewed with MITRE was that I'd already seen that people there seemed to be happy, beyond competent and productive with a good balance between life and work.
For other candidates, try talking to a current or former MITRE employee to get a feel for the corporate structure and environment. Make sure you address differences in environment and culture in different locations -- Boston, DC, Huntsville, LA, etc. all operate somewhat differently.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at MITRE (McLean, VA) in Feb 2012
Interview
Attended an invitational career fair at MITRE. During the career fair, several people took my resume and expressed their interests. A few weeks later, I had a technical phone interview, about 15 minutes. I was invited to have an in-person interview. I interviewed with 2 departments, several people from each department were at the interviews. People asked various questions, some were more technical than others. In general, I would describe the difficulties of the questions to be easy. I was asked to prepare and present a technical topic for 30 minutes as part of the interview. The interviews were fairly long, and took almost a whole day to talk to everyone. I got a preliminary offer the next day over the phone.
