Cox Automotive Interview Questions
& Process

Hiring process was messy. They advertised a salary of $190K but changed it to $150K midway through. The job description seemed to cover too many areas: advanced analytics requiring a PhD, AI skills, and industrial labor planning. The case study itself was good, but some interviewers seemed more annoyed than interested in evaluating. The hiring manager was okay, but the whole experience suggested bigger problems with the company culture. I ended up declining because I found a company with a smoother hiring process and a better team.

So I started with a quick recruiter call, then chatted with the hiring manager about the job and my experience. After that, I went to the Atlanta office for an onsite panel interview with 2 Principal Engineers and 1 Senior Software Engineer. The onsite involved tackling two LeetCode Medium coding problems. It felt like it went well, and they said I passed and wanted to move forward. But then, things got really slow with communication. My initial recruiters were let go, and after waiting about 5 and a half weeks with no news, I had to chase down my new recruiter. They then told me they'd gone with someone else. The actual interviews were good and the engineers were great, but the follow-up from recruiting was messy and slow, especially since I had to ask for updates after weeks of silence.

The interview process had 2 rounds. The first round was with the hiring manager and wasn't too hard, mostly asking resume-based and culture questions. The second round was a 1-hour panel interview where they asked more in-depth resume-based technical questions and role-related questions. The last 30 minutes of that round involved a coding challenge where they gave me code in a language I'm good at and asked me to complete a simple task, which was also not difficult.

The interview was conducted digitally and felt very impersonal and cold, with minimal human interaction. They required candidates to use a specific format for answering scenario-based questions, which felt demanding for an unpaid stage. The interviewer seemed inexperienced and the overall atmosphere was cold. When I asked for the benefits package, they suggested I find it online via Google. Additionally, the role requires 3 days of travel per week, but they offer no car allowance for vehicle wear and tear, with the 70 cents per mile reimbursement being insufficient.