Betterment Interview Questions
& Process

I made it to the final round (round 4) of interviews. The process started during a big life event, and the recruiter wanted me to move faster than I was comfortable with. A case study took up a whole day over the weekend. I got no feedback during or after the final presentation. It felt like they were trying to sell me on the role, so the rejection and lack of communication were confusing. I got a generic auto-rejection email saying they picked someone else, which didn't make sense as I was in the final round. They said I'd get feedback, but then ghosted me. I followed up with the hiring manager four times like they encouraged, and heard nothing back. Everyone was nice, and it seems like a good company, but the lack of transparency and follow-through was disappointing.

I interviewed twice with Betterment for this role. The first time, about two years ago, the hiring manager reached out for their 401k Compliance Associate position. I applied and was scheduled for an initial interview, but the interviewer was super late. No heads-up or anything. I had to reach out, and they offered to do it then or reschedule. I just bailed and withdrew my application. The second time, a few months ago, the hiring manager reached out again. I got past the first 1-on-1 interview and had a second round with the manager who messaged me. He seemed keen. The recruiter then said the final interview would be scheduled by another recruiter. I waited, and nobody contacted me. I messaged my assigned recruiter, who was out for a week. I then messaged the original recruiter for an update and got zero response. I ended up reaching out to the hiring manager on LinkedIn myself and found out they hired someone else. It was incredibly unprofessional on their part; expect to be ghosted even when the hiring manager contacts you. They really don't respect interviewees' time.

I went through a three-stage interview process at Betterment. First, there was a 30-minute call. Then, I was given a case study to complete. Finally, there was a 4-hour on-site interview with multiple back-to-back interviews. While I get that a thorough hiring process is important, it felt like too much and was really disorganized. The on-site interview didn't even have breaks for the bathroom, which made it super tiring. I spent over 7 hours on this whole thing and then just got a short, generic rejection email with no feedback. I tried to follow up for some helpful insights, but they just ghosted me. It was really disappointing to experience such unprofessionalism and disregard for candidates' time. It makes you wonder about leadership if the hiring process involves so many people. And if you can't even give basic feedback after a process this long, it says a lot about the company's culture.

After applying, I had a recruiter screen, then a manager screen. Then I went for an in-person onsite in their New York office. The onsite had four rounds: coding, system design, another manager chat, and a behavioral one. It was a bummer I didn't get an offer. The interviews weren't a complete disaster, but I could have definitely done better in some areas, like understanding the scaling hints in the system design round.