Cadre Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process was quite long, with a total of 7 interviews, which felt like a lot. It began with a chat with the senior talent partner, then I spoke with someone currently in the role. After that, I had interviews with the sales director, fund manager, director of strategy & operations, and two senior client service associates. Even though all the interviews went smoothly and I got good feedback, I was told the position was put on hold because of layoffs happening at the company.

I applied in late April. First, I had a phone screen with HR, which went really well, and I was selected for the next round. Then, I did a code pair with a lead engineer where I had to complete his questions and ensure the program output was correct. Since that went well, I was called in for an onsite. The onsite started with a lead engineer asking a mix of technical and non-technical questions. Next, another lead engineer conducted a non-technical interview focused on my experience. After that, I had a systems design interview where I had to create a solid design and discuss optimizations. The final interview was a technical programming interview where I couldn't solve the main question completely and my code was inefficient, though we had a casual conversation afterwards. The company treats people really well and they even took me out for lunch!

Applied online, got a phone screen with a recruiter about 3 weeks later. The next week, I had an on-site interview that turned out to be a negative experience. The HR team seemed disorganized. I was told it would be a 1.5-hour interview with 3 people for 30 minutes each. When I arrived, the first interviewer was late. The third interviewer met me first and seemed unprepared, admitting she didn't know what to ask and kept checking the clock. She was possibly a filler because the first person was late. After 30 minutes, she left, and the first person came in for 45 minutes. I was then told the next step was an on-site with the CTO. The second person I was supposed to meet was never mentioned. A few days later, I got rejected and never heard back after asking for feedback. The whole process was messy, and for a startup, they need to improve their professionalism and interview structure. It felt like a clique, and based on others, most people don't get offers unless they're engineers.

I found the opportunity on my own and applied online. A Recruiting Coordinator reached out pretty quickly and asked me to set up a preliminary phone interview. The conversation was long and I thought it went very well. I felt more than qualified for both the role and the next step in the interview process, which was meeting with the People team and doing some testing. I sent a thank you follow up note and then received a generic rejection e-mail two weeks later. No feedback given other than they "need to be selective".