FairWarning Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process started with a phone call with HR where I answered some standard questions that the hiring manager had prepared. This was followed by a second phone interview directly with the hiring manager. The final stage was an in-person interview that ran for about 2.5 to 3 hours. During this time, I met with several team members and then had to do a whiteboard exercise in front of a panel. The whiteboard exercise felt pretty awkward because the team admitted they hadn't really done one for this type of role before, and it showed in the vagueness of the questions. It wasn't clear what they were looking for in the answers. While most of the people I met were great, one senior person was really unprofessional, using aggressive language and showing up late, which made me decide to pull my application.

So I got a call from a recruiter and they left a message and sent an email. I called back and emailed them back. I followed up the next day and they got back to me on the third day and wanted to set up a phone screen. They called me back at the time we set and we talked for about 30 minutes. They asked me about my values and what I liked most about the company. After that, they said they would be in touch. A couple days later they called again and wanted to set up a phone interview with the CISO, so we set a time. They called at the scheduled time and we talked for about 30 minutes, again asking about my values and experiences. After that call, I was told they would be in contact. A few days later they called and wanted to set up an onsite interview. We set a date and time and they told me it was super important to research the company and the people I would be meeting. I also had to take a DISC personality test and fill out a job application to bring with me. When I got to the onsite, I found out I would be meeting with four different people, each for 30 minutes. Only the IT Director asked job-related questions. The other three asked the same questions over and over about who I am and what I like to do. None of them tested me on what I knew about the company or them. I heard back a couple days later and they said they wanted to move forward and I needed to write a letter to the CEO explaining why he should hire me. At the same time, I got my personality test results back and was told to read them, respond with my thoughts, and defend some of the results. After I wrote and sent the letter, I heard back a couple days later and they wanted to schedule a meeting with the CEO. We set a time and then on the morning of, they called to reschedule because the original time wouldn't work. I went in and interviewed with the CEO one-on-one. He looked at my resume and then spent 30 minutes asking me the same questions everyone else had asked so far: who I am and what I like to do. A few days after meeting the CEO, I got an email saying my qualifications weren't good enough for the job. It took them four weeks to figure out what other companies would know upfront.

I applied online and heard back from HR quickly to set up a brief initial call. This first call was a quick 5-minute intro with a couple of basic questions, and we scheduled a second phone interview for the next day. The second interview was about 25 minutes and included more general questions, plus four SQL and four UNIX questions. I felt pretty good about how I did on the general questions, got all the SQL questions, and answered two of the UNIX ones correctly, but they ended up going in a different direction.

Started with a quick discovery call with a TA Coordinator (around 10 mins) to go over my experience, why I was applying, and salary expectations. Then, a more formal, scripted phone interview with the same TA Coordinator (about 30 mins) that wasn't too challenging. The longest part was the on-site interviews with 3-5 team members (about 2 hours). One interviewer had standard questions, but the others were more conversational and really wanted to see genuine interest in the role. It felt a bit like an ego check, maybe a leftover from old hiring practices.