Cogo Labs Interview Questions
& Process

The Head of People reached out to me directly for an interview. I told them I didn't think I was qualified, but I was willing to talk. They seemed really arrogant and didn't pick up on social cues during our conversation. It felt very much like a sales pitch. I had heard good things about Cogo, so I thought it was worth exploring. I then spoke with a peer, and it was a weird experience. She was very cold and robotic, asking me a bunch of standard questions. When I tried to ask her questions after she asked if I had any, she was rude. She rushed to end the call, and I got a cold email saying I didn't get the job afterward. I figured it was because I wasn't qualified, which is what I told them at the start, and they treated me like I wasn't even worth their time after they initially reached out.

Started with a quick intro call, then a 30 min zoom. After that, a one hour zoom where they asked behavioral questions and a brain teaser. Then there was a big three hour zoom session that was broken into three separate one hour calls, each with two interviewers. Two of those calls included brain teasers, and all of them had behavioral questions. Finally, a 30 min call with an executive.

The process started with an automated Codility coding challenge that had 2 questions, and I had 117 minutes to do it, which was way more than I needed. The first question was about finding the max number of apples you can pick from trees in a row without the two pickers overlapping. The second question was about how many steps it takes to get a number, represented as a binary string, down to 0 by either dividing by 2 if it's even or subtracting 1 if it's odd. After that, I had a phone screen, which was a really dumb 'interview.' The person interviewing me was a new grad, not the senior software lead I was supposed to talk to, and they were kind of condescending. They had a list of pointless CS trivia questions that are easy to Google and not really that useful for a new grad to know offhand, especially since I'm not even a CS major. It was weird because there were no questions to actually check my coding skills, which is pretty important, right? Instead, it was all about memorizing obscure CS facts. Plus, they kept correcting me when I answered, which was annoying.

I had a 1-hour phone screen that was half behavioral and half brain teasers. The very next day, I got an email inviting me to the final round. Everyone was nice and the office was great. My only complaint is how much they focus on brain teasers. These are really random, niche questions that are impossible to prepare for. I don't think they really show intelligence or critical thinking, and I suspect that's why I didn't get the offer. I only got one right, I was mostly done with another, and the third one didn't make sense, so I spent most of the time asking questions. I would have preferred more practical case studies, not necessarily standard consulting ones, but more like asking me how I'd solve one of their actual problems instead of these strange brain teasers with only one correct answer. Also, heads up to the employer, there's basically no info online about Minerva Analytics. I had to completely make up an answer for the 'Why Minerva' question, and I know other candidates had to do the same.