Bestow Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

It kicked off with a recruiter reaching out via email, and then I had a hiring manager interview scheduled. Honestly, that interview was a preview of what was to come. The HM was super late, like 15-20 mins, so I bounced after 15 and then came back 10 mins later just to see if they'd show. They did. It was pretty standard, talking about my background, experience, and learning about the role. A bit weird and disorganized, but I figured it was just a one-off. After that, I had two technical interviews back-to-back. They weren't LeetCode style, more about implementation. One involved a SQL setup where I had to do some basic joins in Postgres and write a function to do a specific task. The next round was similar but more advanced. Then came the system design round, which was the usual setup, recognizable if you've used hellointerview. I actually tried to play it cool by 'discovering' some aspects instead of just stating them, which was a mistake. Better to just jump in and talk it through. The cross-functional round was also pretty much what I expected. The biggest issue was the massive delay in getting any feedback, over 3 weeks. During that time, I interviewed elsewhere, got offers, and even tried nudging them about my status. Basically, I got down-leveled, which apparently threw my application into chaos and caused confusion about where I'd fit. The whole thing dragged on forever, from early January to late February. I was genuinely interested and considered the down-level, but the prolonged, disjointed process made me doubt the company's overall organization. While I appreciate the recruiters trying to coordinate, a decision needs to be made.

I got an email to schedule a recruiter call on Calendly. The recruiter didn't seem to listen to me and was actually a bit antagonistic, which was weird because she said she's empathetic towards job seekers. It was the first time I felt put down and uncomfortable asking any follow-up questions.

I applied to Bestow in January 2021. The whole interview process took about 3 weeks from the first contact with a recruiter to getting an offer. I found them on LinkedIn and applied directly on their website. A recruiter reached out afterward. It started with a phone screen where they asked general fit questions and some basic technical questions, like what tech stacks I know and my interests. Then, I talked to the hiring manager by phone about more technical details and the role itself. After that, there was an online technical assignment on WOVEN that simulated a real-world problem. The next step was the 'on-site' interview, which was done over Zoom because of COVID. It was about 5 hours of back-to-back interviews, including whiteboarding, coding, and chats with managers from different teams. The last interview was with the CTO. It was intense but not overly difficult, just a lot of steps.