I've sent the HR an email describing my status as a non American person to know if I was illegible to be a trainee
Their response was quite fast, they sent me an email and ask me to send them my resume so they can share it with the rest of the team
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Tesla in Apr 2014
Interview
I went to a career fair in September and I unexpectedly received an email from a recruiter in April. I was asked to send in an updated resume and give a time to talk the next week. We set up a "exploratory" phone call/interview. After the call my next contact was a week later via email saying I hadn't made it to the next round. I personally don't think I did very well, but it was my first real interview. Recruiter was very concise, but polite and professional.
On the call she told me I needed to submit a formal application online. If I had made it through I would have had to do 2-3 technical interviews over the next 2 weeks (may be a sped up timeline since it was so close to summer already).
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Mostly questions about my resume/experience i.e. "Tell me about your time at X."
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Tesla (Palo Alto, CA) in Mar 2012
Interview
Contacted by the HR. Initially had 3 interviews over the phone, 1st by HR, 2nd by an Engineer and 3rd by the head of the group. Was called for an onsite interview and was asked to prepare a presentation.