Overall the process was organized. It is obvious that the recruiters are overwhelmed and are having trouble keeping up with the volume of applicants. The process took a few weeks.
First I received an email from a recruiter to talk about the position. They asked for availability but then did not confirm anything. After several days I finally received an invite to do the phone interview.
Phone interview was straight forward for a screening. I was told to look for an email for a coding assessment.
I ended up not hearing anything. I attempted to follow up via email to the recruiter but did not hear a response. After several days (about 5) I received an email from the recruiter and they said they thought they created the assessment link but did not. I received the invite that evening.
The assessment was simple and I completed in the expected amount of time.
About a week later I then heard from the recruiter to complete the virtual interviews.
After scheduling, the recruiter gave me a rundown of what to expect, and it appears to pretty much be the same as most of these other reviews.
Interview Day
First Interview - Coding (2 people interviewing me)
Started off well and we gave an introduction of ourselves. It probably took a little longer because two of them were interviewing me and gave me their background and what they do at the company. I felt we had a good conversation there. The technical question: BE WARNED - even though they claim to not be big on leetcode in their blogs, they are. If you can't solve it EXACTLY the way they expect, you are not "technical" enough. I did not realize this and first solved as simple as possible, talking through it every step of the way. Based on the feedback I did not solve correctly.
- I was not given much opportunity to talk about any of my past projects & accomplishments to demonstrate my technical ability.
- I was only given about 5 minutes to ask my questions to them.
Second Interview - Database
Started off again with the interviewer talking about themselves and all the great things they have done. What the team does, etc. I felt we had a great conversation and we shared laughs. The technical question was simple and the same as everyone else here. It was to design a db for a facebook feed. I tried to keep it again as simple as possible as that's what all the blog posts and interview prep articles claim to say. Based on the feedback I was too simple and didn't solve any edge cases. I was not told to solve for edge cases. At one point the interviewer had said it appears I have everything covered. I'm not quite sure what I did wrong.
- I was given little time to ask questions again.
- The Interviewer did not give much of an opportunity to elaborate on my past experience, just wanted me to solve the question.
Third Interview - System Design
Started off with the same as the other two, we then went into the design question. It was to design a bit.ly service. In my opinion, we got a little too granular for system design as the interviewer began asking questions about details on how a particular method would work. I kept it simple and did not get into distributed systems much because like mentioned before, all over hubspot blogs it was recommended to keep things simple. They asked how I would handle load balancing and I showed a simple load balancer design. Based on the feedback this was not enough and I didn't "solve for the customer". However, we did finish early because the interviewer felt I sufficiently solved the problem (even though in feedback it was opposite).
- I was not given much time to ask questions after as the interviewer was eager to end early and "give me extra time" for a break.
- I was not given much opportunity to talk about my past experience to sufficiently demonstrate my technical ability.
Final Interview: Manager
Very nice person, I felt it was my favorite person to talk to. We shared stories, I was able to talk about my past experience in detail. Was the only one who gave positive feedback. Lots of questions back and forth.
After the interview, I was told I would find out in a couple days. I did not. I attempted to follow up, but was not responded to until about a week later.
From what I understand, the recruiter did not follow up with the interview panel until the day I was contacted and was informed I would not be receiving an offer.
The feedback was that I was not technical enough.
Some Advice -
- Every technical interviewer was no more than 5 years post college and either Senior or Team Lead. Maybe find more "seasoned" engineers to determine technical ability.
- If recruiters are busy, please have them respond to applicants that they are not forgotten and that the recruiter is busy. Being ghosted isn't fun. (Especially for a company that claims to be big about empathy)
- Solving some of these items in 15-20 minutes without memorization can be difficult. Have a little more empathy here.
