Chess.com Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process for the iOS position I applied for was quite concerning. After applying, I didn't hear back for about two months. The interviews included an HR and a technical one, but the questions mainly focused on my past experience rather than in-depth technical or architectural details. It seemed like the technical interviewer might have had an Android background, as our discussion on my project's architecture was superficial, and they needed to check basic iOS details from their internal repository. Following the interviews, I was given a take-home assignment that I spent about a week on, focusing on architecture and tests. However, the feedback suggested it wasn't thoroughly reviewed or run, with comments about tests not running, despite clear instructions. I later learned from others who did similar assignments that they also spent a lot of time and were rejected. The whole process felt disorganized and lacked transparency.

I'm not even sure if I interviewed with this company or if it was a scam. I went through a bunch of interviews and then never heard back. All my messages were ignored. This is a terrible way to run a business; no confirmation of acceptance, no rejection, just no follow-up at all. If you get contacted about a job here on LinkedIn or email, just ignore it. It's not worth the headache.

Got an initial call with the talent partner and it was great. They asked good questions, gave good context and were very pleasant to talk to. They were very clear about what the process would be and got back to me quickly. The next stage was similar, the hiring manager was pleasant to talk to and I felt it was easy to build a connection quickly. When I asked to introduce myself, I mentioned some projects I had completed, some very relevant to the role, others relevant but to a much lesser extent. The interviewer decided to focus on one of these lesser relevant projects. They seemed very interested, asking lots of questions about the structure of the project, the benefits it gave, the response etc. and seemed happy with my answers. I however did not get past this stage and was told simply the experience didn't seem to fit. I had a feeling this would happen as I felt we spent the entire time discussing a project that I myself felt wasn't entirely relevant to the ad. When I asked for more concise feedback I was unfortunately ghosted.

The process went super smoothly, a total of about 4-5 interviews with 3-4 key stakeholders. Everyone there was incredibly kind and easy to talk with, a great company culture without a doubt. If there were two pieces of feedback I could give to help Chess.com improve their process it would be this - 1. Focus on behavioral interviewing - a lot of the questions I got were about what I might do or how I would approach some situation. These are generally no longer considered best practice. Instead, focus on questions like "tell me about a time when... goal achieved, challenge faced, etc.", these lead better insights into how a person/candidate actually behaved in the past in a given situation. 2. One person who interviewed me asked a number of math adjacent puzzle/game based questions. This is pretty abnormal for the role/title and ended up taking up the entire interview time allotted. Fortunately neither of us had a hard stop, so instead of it being 45 minutes, it went 1.5 hours so that I could ask my own questions. As much as I actually did enjoy the game, it really didn't have anything to do with the job. If Chess.com wanted to do a test, it would have been better to give a "project/product management" test - such as a prioritization & planning challenge. Overall, I would absolutely recommend this company, from what I've seen, to anyone I knew that was passionate about chess.