Elementum Interview Questions
& Process

My interview process was pretty standard back then. I knew my manager already, but it still involved a bunch of phone calls. Then I had to fly out to their corporate office and meet with a bunch of important people. After that, they did reference checks, sent over an offer letter, and I accepted. It was basically like speed dating with senior management, including HR, product management, and the VP of marketing. Interestingly, everyone I spoke to during that process eventually got fired or left within two weeks of me starting. I have no clue what the new management does now, but as soon as they fire someone, they hire someone new to replace them.

So I interviewed at Elementum for the Software Engineer-Backend role and it was a pretty good experience overall. The HR team was really responsive, they gave me all the details upfront and let me know if anything changed with the schedule. The technical part started with a quick intro chat with HR, then a coding interview on HackerRank. After that, I had a half-day onsite, which is pretty standard now. It had 5 rounds: First was a 45-minute programming test where I had to code in an IDE on a Mac, followed by a code review with two interviewers. Then, a 2-person panel asked about Data Structures, their Java implementations, and when to use which. They also gave me two whiteboard coding problems using Lists and Trees. Next, a 3-person panel quizzed me on multi-threading and design patterns like Singleton and Observer, and asked me to design a supply chain model. Then I met with the COO, and after that, had a technical chat with two engineers. Finally, I spoke with the hiring manager over the phone. The interviewers were all really approachable and happy to answer my questions about the company culture and work. I got the offer two days later and accepted it.

I got past the phone screens and had an onsite interview. It was a mix of 1:1s with different people and a presentation to a panel. Everyone was nice and friendly except the director of product management. He made some snarky, sarcastic comments. At first, I thought he was kidding, but it kept going. When he asked a question to the panel, they stayed quiet. He did most of the talking when he was there. He used a lot of PM jargon that made me wonder if he really knew what he was talking about. I felt like he was just trying to show authority to the panel. I never heard back about moving forward after the onsite. The company culture they described didn't match my experience.

This was one of the worst recruiting experiences I've had, very unprofessional. Communications were always late or rescheduled last minute. The hiring manager was almost 30 minutes late for our video call without any notice. I had to contact the recruiter to make sure it was still on. The recruiter never followed up; I had to chase them for updates and express thanks at every step, even after multiple interviews. After the final interview, I was ghosted for over a week. It took a third email, CC'ing the hiring manager, to finally get a response saying I wasn't moving forward. Honestly, just lazy recruiting. They don't value your time. I get it's a startup and things are fast-paced, but recruiters are the face of the company and should provide a positive candidate experience regardless of the outcome. It was clear this wouldn't be a good culture fit for me, as I value others' time. It was painfully obvious.