Freshworks Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process was smooth. I had timely updates from the HR and all the 4 rounds were completed within 2 weeks. The first round will be with the lead of customer success where basic questions like why and what is CSM, previous job related questions will be asked. Then the next round shall be with the senior managers and might go upto the director level. There would be a round where you will be asked to demo the product. You don't have to be a product expert but they will definitely expect you to know the capabilities and business uses cases and how articulate and interactive you are with the customer.

The interview experience was quite unprofessional. The interviewer didn't show up or even their face during the video call, making it feel like I was talking to a blank screen, which was really off-putting. Additionally, the interviewer seemed more focused on impressing the female interviewer by asking me irrelevant questions and putting me down. When I mentioned positive aspects of the company, the interviewer became rude, even though I was only stating facts about what the company has done for employees and information from public sources. It's surprising that Freshworks allows interviewers with such unprofessional behavior to conduct interviews. They should avoid asking irrelevant questions.

I was contacted by the VP, Global Customer Marketing, about a Director position at Freshworks. He mentioned the company's need to update its processes and move beyond old methods. After some thought, I accepted the opportunity. The next step was meeting the team and potentially working in their San Mateo office three days a week. My interactions with Freshworks' external recruiters were okay; they were not very responsive and seemed a bit disorganized. After completing a couple of interview rounds and getting very positive feedback, I received a generic email saying Freshworks was pursuing a different direction. This was unexpected. The hiring manager explained they were looking for someone with specific niche experience and that I was too experienced for the role, which seemed strange given the VP's initial outreach and knowledge of my background. This suggests poor communication and internal misalignment at Freshworks. Maybe it's for the best.

The interview process had four rounds. The first was a coding round, which I cleared. The second was a design round, also cleared. The third round was a 'Bar Riser' round, combining coding and design, which I also cleared. The fourth round was with the hiring manager. He felt I wasn't the right fit for his role, which was more infrastructure provisioning focused. He thought my background was better suited for product development and backend work and passed me to another team. This new team then scheduled an interview with a director. The recruiter said it would be about Technical Leadership, but it turned out to be another design round. The interviewer asked me to design a rate limiter. When I asked for clarification on scope and requirements, she told me to figure it out myself. Then she abruptly changed the problem to designing an authentication system. I started designing a Single Sign-On (SS-On) system, but she got confused and asked me to design the service provider instead. The problem changed again to designing a document upload system. I proposed a standard, production-grade solution using S3 pre-signed URLs, which she accepted. This whole thing lasted about 45 minutes. Afterward, the recruiter rejected me, stating the director wasn't satisfied with my low-level and high-level design. I think my time was completely wasted after a month of prep and dealing with their constant reschedules. This company seems to enjoy wasting candidates' time under the guise of a rigorous process. They did the same thing to me last year.