Esker Interview Questions
& Process

Had a call with a headhunter, who found me on LinkedIn. It was a great intro to the role and company. The conversation was relevant, questions were precise, context was clear, and the exchange was concise.

I started with a recruiter call, it was basically a screening to see if I was a good fit. They wanted to know if I had dev experience and if I was personable enough for consulting. Since I just graduated and didn't know much javascript (their main language), I was worried, but they said it was fine as long as I understood the logic and could learn fast. Next, I got a coding challenge to do in 24 hours. They were flexible with the timing, which was nice. It was a pretty simple file intake and parsing problem. The final stage was a 3-hour-long interview with different people, each session was 30 minutes. Most were one-on-one, but one had three people, though they were all really relaxed. It wasn't as scary as I thought it would be! Everyone was super friendly and we had some good chats about interesting stuff and my background. One interviewer asked some technical questions, but no coding required, just basic stuff like the difference between == and ===.

The recruitment process had 4 steps: first, an HR phone call, then an online skills test, followed by an online personality test, and finally, an in-person interview at the Lyon office. Steps 1 and 3 were pretty standard and went well. Step 2 was a general skills assessment for the role, as expected. What was surprising, though, was that for a trilingual translator position (English, French + a third language), this first technical test only assessed English and French skills. Step 4 involved a 60-minute technical test, a motivation interview with my potential teammate and the department head, a debrief of the online personality test results, and a tour of the offices with an informal meet-and-greet with some team members. This last stage went really well overall; everyone was welcoming, open, and took the time needed for discussions, extending the afternoon. It was a very positive experience. However, I don't rate the process positively overall due to the technical test. It assessed various skills, mainly three-language translation. This is relevant for the role, but the test was done with pen and paper and no dictionaries, like a university exam. While I understand the idea – perhaps to check basic knowledge in the languages – it's completely unlike a real translator's work conditions. Translators use dictionaries, computers, and the internet for industry conventions. The goal isn't a quick, approximate translation, but a polished, precise, and natural one. What's more, candidates were competing in different languages. Some had to translate into a third language close to French, which is more manageable due to similar writing systems, syntax, vocabulary, and idioms, requiring less thought. Others, like me, had a rare third language, very different from French with a complex writing system. In my case, it was Japanese, with its unique syntax, style registers, and thousands of ideograms needing regular handwriting practice. This made the exercise significantly harder. I was ashamed of my output, knowing it wasn't professional quality. This likely played a significant role in my application being rejected. My advice to Esker would be: assess all requested languages in the initial online technical test for better upstream filtering and to avoid issues during the physical interview. I might not have passed that stage, but that's part of the game and would have clarified language competency early on. Rethink the second technical test's format. Ideally, it should be on a computer with dictionary access (perhaps even allow candidates to use their own computers with preferred tools) and only pit candidates with similarly difficult target languages against each other. Also, consider adding one or two text rewriting/improvement exercises. I thought I saw a couple of repetitions and slightly ambiguous or odd phrasing I would have liked to improve from a UX perspective, but that kind of editing wasn't part of the instructions. If you open a similar position, let's connect again! That said, the rest of the process was enriching, constructive, and very kind. I don't regret the experience, apart from not being selected, of course! Good luck to the company in building its translation team to meet its needs.

It was a pretty standard interview process. I went in, and they asked me STAR behavioral questions. Then, they asked me to explain my resume, and after that, the conversation moved on to typical topics like company culture, what being a consultant entails, and my programming experience. They didn't get back to me after the interview, though.