Base CRM Interview Questions
& Process

I was contacted by a recruiter for an SDR role, then I spoke with the SDR Manager and scheduled an in-person meeting. The plan was to meet a team member, then the SDR Manager, and finally the director. If everything went well, I'd hear back about an offer within two days. I had an initial chat with a team member who seemed disengaged, which I tried to navigate positively. Then I spoke with the SDR Manager, who was friendly and down-to-earth, and made me realize I shouldn't settle for less than I'm worth. While the next step would typically be meeting the director, I was told I wasn't a fit for the company. This felt mutual, as I also had reservations. They mentioned needing someone with a 'killer' attitude, willing to work long hours, eat lunch at the office, and understand CRM. It might not be ideal for work-life balance given it's a growing small business; if you're used to flexibility, long lunches, or WFH, this might not be for you. Expect to start early and finish late. A serious demeanor is important, and the culture might not suit everyone. Despite being a small office outside SF, it seems like a good opportunity as SDRs can be promoted to Account Executive in 4-12 months.

I went through the interview process at Base CRM in July 2017, which lasted about a month. It started with a recruiter call, then we had an onsite culture interview, followed by another onsite interview that was a mix of presentation and skill assessment. Finally, there was one more onsite culture interview. Scheduling the onsite interviews was really inefficient and they didn't seem to put much thought into it. For the skill assessment, they gave me a real business challenge to work on. I had to analyze the problem and present creative solutions to show my expertise. After the interview, they asked for a copy of my presentation, which felt like they were taking advantage of my work.

I started with a phone call with the hiring manager, which was pretty standard, covering my background and checking for cultural fit. Then, I had an onsite interview at their San Francisco office with two sales managers. They were really passionate about the company and asked some thought-provoking questions, effectively differentiating the company from competitors for potential hires. I was impressed by their openness and honesty, and I was getting quite excited about potentially joining their sales team. After that, we set up another onsite to meet with an enterprise team leader for a skills assessment. The final step before an offer was supposed to be a 'quick chat' with the CEO. The initial meeting with the enterprise team leader went really well. She was charismatic and candid, giving an unvarnished assessment of the company. The interview felt like a relaxed conversation. However, the 'quick chat' with the CEO took a turn. I had been warned by both the sales managers and the enterprise team leader that the CEO could be 'difficult' and that I shouldn't be discouraged if it didn't go well. I initially dismissed it as just being a tough interviewer. But the conversation quickly shifted from odd to hostile. It felt less like an interview and more like a severe reprimand. He started criticizing my experience, accused me of fabricating my past performance metrics, and claimed I had made poor career choices by moving to the Bay Area and working for a startup. He wouldn't accept my reasons for leaving a major competitor to move to the Bay, insisting I had made a mistake and that if my performance was as good as my numbers suggested, they wouldn't have let me go. He brought this up multiple times during the roughly 20-minute conversation, at times becoming confrontational. He even asked about my other job prospects and made unprofessional, disparaging remarks about those companies. Towards the end, things got really strange as he started asking inappropriate personal questions, like my age and where I lived. The CEO's behavior was so bizarre that I still find it hard to believe it actually happened. Setting aside his decision about my fit for the role, his comments about my career history were completely out of line. Based on other reviews, my experience wasn't an isolated incident. While I understand a CEO wanting to be involved in hiring during an early growth phase, having someone with such poor interpersonal skills can only hurt the company's hiring efforts. It's a real shame because the sales management team I spoke with was truly inspiring.

We had about a 1.5hr chat. It was mostly about your background, what you do in your job and your life outside work. We threw in a few simple technical questions covering Linux, shell scripting, cloud, networking, common tech, and databases – nothing too hard for a Linux/Unix person. Then, we spent about 30 minutes on a whiteboard, drawing out an architecture. The idea was to see if you could tackle a problem, come up with a solution, and talk about how to build it. Basically, we wanted to know if we could collaborate effectively.