Built In Interview Questions
& Process

Things started off a bit shaky. I got a quick reply from a recruiter after applying and they asked for my availability, which was fast. But then, they sent a repeat email just two minutes later in the same thread. I thought that was odd, but figured it was a typo. I replied 20 minutes later and got an out-of-office response. Strange timing, right? This was on a Thursday, and then I got an interview invite for the following Monday. My first chat was with a Hiring Manager, which was surprising because the info I got said the first call would be with a recruiter. I was fine with skipping the recruiter and talking to the hiring manager, but when I brought it up, they said the Product team does things differently, even though the info was specific to the Product team. I passed the Hiring Manager interview and then had a panel interview with three people back-to-back. On the interview day, I had my first two chats, but then got an email from the recruiter saying the third interviewer had to cancel last minute due to something that came up, and we'd need to reschedule. It seemed like a clear excuse because I felt my first interview didn't go too well. I'm okay admitting when I mess up, and I know I kind of blew that round. They weren't going to reschedule; they just weren't upfront about telling me I didn't make it and were moving on with other candidates. Their internal process is clearly disorganized and they aren't honest. While I liked moving fast and skipping some steps, their disorganization and lack of openness left me with a bad impression of the company.

The interview process felt really open and moved fast, but then I suddenly got a generic rejection email. When I reached out to my contacts from the hiring team, they gave me the exact same vague, pre-written response when I asked for more detailed feedback on why I wasn't selected. It was super disappointing, especially since I invested a lot of time in the interview assignment and prepping for the interviews. I think I spent about six hours total on the assignment and getting ready for the conversations, only to get this kind of reply. If you're going to say your hiring process is transparent, you should actually be prepared to give candidates clearer feedback when they ask, particularly when you're asking for their time and effort on assignments that are relevant to the job.

I applied online and got a link for a personality test. Then the hiring manager contacted me to schedule a meeting. She talked about the job posting, asked about my background and interest in the position. She mentioned they had offered the role to someone else, but my profile was strong, so they wanted to talk to me since they hadn't received a final confirmation from the other candidate. I appreciated her transparency about the situation. I received an email stating I didn't get the job, but I valued how she managed my expectations and clearly explained the process. I would consider applying again for a suitable role.

Applied online and heard back from a recruiter about two weeks later. The interview had three rounds. The first round was a technical chat with an engineering lead about my experience and some questions on app architectures. The second was a typical system design whiteboard exercise, which was pretty standard. I had to talk through the design and answer questions about edge cases. The third round involved a technical refactoring task, where I had to improve some given code while explaining my thinking. Everyone I met was really nice and thoughtful, and seemed pretty personable. Sadly, after the third interview, they ghosted me. I reached out to check on my application status but never heard back from the recruiter after the last interview, so I guess they chose someone else. Besides that, the interview process was better than usual and pretty smooth.