Buildium Interview Questions
& Process

The whole process took about a month. I applied online and within a week, a recruiter reached out to set up a screening call. She explained the process saying it would be a 3 rounds of interviews with one being a case study presentation. Next, I spoke to the hiring manager and someone else on the team at the same time. They were very unprepared for the interview. One of them looked like she also just got out of bed and the questions they asked were questions you could easily find answers to on my resume. My next round was a 2 hr interview with me presenting for an hour and speaking to multiple people. I spent a lot of time working on my presentation and overall I got positive feedback. The last round interview was with the hiring manager again and she didn’t ask me anything this time, it was more of a conversation just talking about our hobbies which I enjoyed and turned out we had a lot of interests overlapping. After the whole process, the recruiter sent an automated message within a few days saying i wasn’t getting an offer. After spending a total of 7 hours of interviewing and presenting, an automated message was a slap in the face. I reached out for feedback to see where there could be potential misalignment and got no response. If you’re going to ask candidates to be in 2 hour interviews, give it the 2 mins and provide feedback for their time at the very least.

The interview process was pretty fast, taking about two weeks. Initially, I applied expressing interest in frontend development alongside backend. I received a video call invitation. The first interview was with the person in charge of the Portugal office in Porto. They presented the company's business, and I shared my career background and professional expectations. It was unusual not to be contacted by HR first. The manager then sent an assessment with two parts: an algorithm logic problem about an ATM dispensing specific bill denominations (requiring modulus operations), and an object-oriented programming question involving encapsulation, polymorphism, and inheritance, with a task to add more tests to existing unit tests. Each assessment part was allocated about 30 minutes. This was followed by another video call to discuss the assessment, understand my thought process, and hear my reasoning. Then, there was an interview in English to gauge my language proficiency. This English interview was more challenging, asking about architectural solutions for scalable systems, how to track metrics if the error tracking system failed, how to avoid constant database hits, and how to improve the performance of a URL shortener. Subsequently, the engineering manager inquired about my availability to start, mentioning a potential interview with a VP at Buildium. However, this interview never happened. Instead, I received a job offer with a contract draft. Confusingly, the contract listed Upperhand Software, a Portuguese consulting firm, instead of Buildium. Research confirmed Buildium in Portugal had rebranded to Upperhand Software, with Portuguese ownership rather than US. The offered salary for the senior role was below my expectations, and due to the unclear situation with the company in Portugal, I declined the offer. Overall, the interview experience was good, despite the lack of clarity regarding the company's status in Portugal, possibly due to COVID. The company currently has no physical presence in Portugal.

It started with a recruiter call, then a 30-minute chat with the hiring manager where they asked standard questions. After that, I had to do an on-site 15-minute presentation about accounting. I didn't get much info on what to present or how, but I found out later there was a whiteboard I could use. Then came three one-on-one interviews with the team manager, an associate, and the hiring manager again. The team manager was pretty intense and kept drilling down on my past experience. The whole process was pretty quick, decision made in under a month. In the end, I don't think it was the right place for me, but the interview process itself was smooth.

I was really interested and prepared a lot for every call. The recruiting team didn't keep me updated like they should have, and I always had to chase them for next steps. They claimed my emails weren't going through and that they left voicemails, but that wasn't true. I even had to ask if I got the job! They said they left a message on my phone, which also didn't happen. A simple email would have been fine. Even though the company seems well-organized, maybe it's worth a second look. If they value professionalism and a high-touch experience, that should extend to everyone, even those trying to join the team.