Core Home Designer Interview Questions
& Process

Got contacted via LinkedIn and went through the first round of interviews while I was freelancing. They asked me to do a sketch sprint, but when I asked for the number of hours so it wouldn't conflict with my freelancing work, they couldn't give me a clear answer. I told them I was worried about the sprint conflicting with my job, and then I didn't hear back about the second round. If you're really desperate for a job, this might be okay for you. But I'm not about doing free work, that's a boundary for me.

The interview included: 1. A chat with a senior designer. 2. A chat with the hiring manager. 3. A chat with the design team. 4. Some test projects. 5. A chat with the CEO. The team seems cool and supportive, but it's very CEO-driven there, which makes sense as he owns it. But man, the CEO was super rude and unprofessional to me. Also, the test projects felt like free work, they asked for TWO big ones tied to their products. No feedback or anything, they probably just use it as data. It was weird.

I was not given a lot of detail about the job when I took the interview but was pretty desperate to get out of my company at the time. I was brought in for an interview with the owner which I took during my lunch hour and had to wait around for an hour for him to finally show up despite an appointment...should have seen that as a red flag to begin with as he was clearly not respectful of my time at all. Once he finally showed up, I was grilled with very disturbing questions. It seemed he just wanted to get information out of me since they knew I worked for a well known competitor. They wanted to use my factory contacts, inside knowledge, and even wanted to use and copy some of the other company's designs to start a new line of their own. I was also grilled with personal questions, such as asking what I was currently being paid, what my rent cost, whether I lived with my boyfriend, and what my boyfriend did for a living. I declined to answer and explained that those questions felt inappropriate. It was a total turn off and very disgusting behavior. Really felt that he was asking things to see how little he could get away with paying me. Very clear from walking around the office that they hire mostly women and to me also very telling that he asked about my dad and my boyfriend...