Galatea Associates LLC Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

So I had this take-home technical interview first. Then, the next part was a 30 minute call where we talked about my resume and did a design interview. After that, there was a 6 hour orientation and technical interview. The very last round involved a design question and then fixing bugs in some code. I gotta say, one of the interviewers was pretty rude. They mentioned before that their third round design question usually trips people up, and turns out it was because what they verbally asked and the PDF problem statement were actually different from what they wanted. One interviewer realized the mix-up and tried to apologize, but his colleague cut him off. Even though I finished the technical part of round three early, they passed on me because of the design question mix-up.

First, I had a behavioral interview with HR, followed by a 2-hour technical interview. During the technical part, they asked me to solve a Java/JSON problem and then explain my thought process. I worked on the problem alone for an hour during the call, and then they joined me once my time was up.

I applied in June via LinkedIn and was quickly contacted by a recruiter from a third-party service. It seemed a bit strange that they needed a recruiter for an entry-level role, but I proceeded. I asked for more details and received what looked like meeting notes from Galatea outlining their needs. This document had some contradictory points, like mentioning a "VERY high bar, quick coding test which most average engineers FAIL" alongside "can take strong juniors, even with light coding skills." The whole thing was full of similar red flags. Then, I was sent a PDF application that needed to be printed, filled out, and returned – not an electronic form. This application requested my test scores from high school, going back to SATs and ACTs. I'm not sure why they're interested in my test results from 7 years ago. They also asked for professional references BEFORE the first interview. At this point, there were too many red flags, so I declined, stating it wasn't a good fit. My assessment is that the hiring team is out of touch with modern hiring practices. This critique is aimed at the HR/hiring department specifically, so don't let it deter you from applying if you're willing to deal with the unusual process. My advice to the company, based on my experience with over 200 applications and successful hires at 3 other companies, is: 1. Don't ask for SAT scores; they don't predict job performance and make you seem out of touch. 2. For software roles, use standard electronic applications instead of requiring printouts. 3. Using recruiters for entry-level roles is odd and suggests a lack of internal interest; if you use them, vet them better to ensure they are professional and not just distributing meeting notes. 4. References should be the FINAL step, used for confirmation, not an initial screening. If used initially by every company, references would be overwhelmed.