Codexis Interview Questions
& Process

Recruiters were unresponsive, making it a total waste of my time. The interview process started with a recruiter phone screen, followed by a 30-minute interview with the hiring manager. After that, a different recruiter contacted me about scheduling a full panel interview, but I never got a response. I finally heard back three weeks later, with the excuse that my email must have "fallen through the cracks," even though I followed up multiple times. The full panel involved 8 hours of interviews with scientists and engineers over two days. After the panel, I didn't get any updates from the recruiters, and my follow-ups were ignored. The scientists and engineers were nice, but the ghosting and lack of respect for my time and energy made the experience negative. After spending 4 hours straight on interviews TWICE, a simple rejection would have been the minimum courtesy.

It all kicked off via Linkedin. The HR recruiter was super informed about the job and Codexis's tech, which was a nice surprise. Then, I had an intro chat with the hiring manager, who laid out the role and her vision for the team and company. After that, I interviewed with some really smart folks on the immediate team for an hour. This was followed by a 1-hour seminar and then a full day of interviews, including panels and 1-on-1s, with important people in the department and some execs. The hiring manager (my future mentor) and HR kept me updated throughout. The final meeting included the offer, which was competitive for the Bay Area. All in all, it was a good, clear, and pleasant experience!

The interview started with a phone screen where we talked about my past experience that fit the job description. Then there was an onsite interview which had a research seminar and interviews with a panel of staff, starting with HR and finishing with the hiring manager. This is pretty standard for a Scientist role. The phone interview went well. I think the seminar was well received and the panel interviews went great. The panel was really nice and easy to talk to. The whole thing from first contact to the decision took about a month, which felt a bit long. In the end, they told me they decided not to hire a Scientist (PhD level) but an Associate (non-PhD). It felt like a waste of time because they didn't even know what staffing they needed. I would've been less annoyed if they had just picked someone else for the Scientist job instead of saying the job didn't exist anymore.

I applied on their website and they got back to me about a week later to set up an initial phone interview. When the interview day came, they called an hour after the scheduled time instead of on time. The interview was about my previous, related experience and why I wanted to work for the company. I followed up twice with a thank you email and to ask for updates on the hiring process, but I never heard back. Unfortunately, the recruiters/hiring manager don't seem to communicate well in this process, as they also didn't update me like they said they would.