Calico Life Sciences Interview Questions
& Process

The interview was pretty standard. It was a panel interview with people you'd work with daily. They asked questions about your expertise and also about culture fit. The questions were good and the discussions seemed positive. However, there were a couple of things that concerned me as a candidate. We agreed to reschedule due to a last-minute request, but only giving less than 24 hours notice suggests the team or company is less concerned about bringing in new talent and more focused on their internal needs, which is a bit of a double-edged sword. Ironically, even with the reschedule, the interview started 15 minutes late.

The interview process was spread out over several steps, so it took about 6 weeks from application to the final stages. After the HR/recruiter call, the process involved further scientific/technical interviews with the hiring manager (HM) and another technical expert. This led to the research seminar and interviews with several (about 8-10) members of the cross-functional team. The final interview panel discussed several scientific questions from the seminar as well as behavioral questions to assess fit and alignment with company/team goals and mission.

I applied and spoke with a recruiter, then went through several 1-on-1 interviews and an all-day online panel interview with about 10 people. The interviews were really unpleasant; most interviewers were rude and condescending, and the overall vibe felt elitist and pretentious, like I had to prove I was worthy of being there. People were unfriendly, didn't smile much, were curt, and acted like the interview was a bother. The questions were extremely technical, with no personality assessment at all, like a college final exam. Some science questions weren't relevant to the job or mentioned in the description. When I asked one PI about the qualities of a perfect employee, he told me to just look at the job description. Some people didn't even leave time for my questions. The whole process took about 3 weeks, followed by 3 weeks of silence before I was rejected. They also asked for references before the panel interview, which was a bit odd.

It started with an HR phone call to get a feel for my general knowledge about the company. Then, I had a call with the Hiring Manager where we talked about my general scientific interests. After that, there was a take-home technical project. Honestly, the take-home wasn't too hard and didn't really connect to my research background, which felt like a bit of a wasted effort given my PhD. The team didn't seem that interesting to me either, and it felt like a role with limited scientific independence. Ultimately, it wasn't a good fit for me.