Formation Bio Interview Questions
& Process

First, I passed the initial HR screen and the hiring manager interview, both virtual, which went smoothly. The hiring manager seemed engaged with my background. Next, I had a virtual panel interview with four other people, including the two co-founders. Honestly, it felt like they weren't interested from the beginning, and I noticed them working on other things. About 10 minutes in, they mentioned that they were looking for different skills than what was listed in the job description and what the HR and hiring manager had told me.

It started with a recruiter screen, followed by a first round with a senior member of the people team. During this interview, I was told the hiring manager was out of town, so they would be conducting the interview instead. The conversation then shifted to questions about sourcing techniques for finding candidates with AI/ML experience. It's a bit strange, considering I interviewed for this role back in September and it's been heavily promoted since June, yet there's still no hire 7 months later. I suspect this isn't a company that's serious about hiring for this position and might just be crowdsourcing for competitive advantages in AI recruitment.

The process was straightforward but very long. The hiring manager seemed genuinely interested in my experience, which was nice - would definitely be someone I would want to work for. HR was not very helpful, I feel like they don't like to answer questions unless it can be done with an AI-automated email.

So I was first contacted by a recruiter for a software engineering role. I passed their initial screening and was scheduled to meet with the hiring manager, but then they cancelled the interview last minute, saying I was a better fit for data engineering. This wasn't something we'd discussed, and honestly, I wasn't sure I wanted to be a data engineer. But, I decided to go through with it to see if my mind would change. The hiring manager for data engineering seemed really nice and insightful, making me feel like they'd be a supportive manager. The final round was intense, involving a case study, values discussion, cross-functional collaboration, pair programming with system design, and a Q&A session. A few days before, I found out about a case study presentation I needed to prepare for, a 10-15 minute talk due 24 hours before the interview, which was pretty stressful. It also felt like a lot of the questions were repeated across the case study, values interview, and cross-functional collaboration sections.