GeoComply Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process began with a recruiter call. Then, there were two technical rounds, one focused on system design and the other on coding. The system design part was rough, honestly. The interviewer seemed like a junior to mid-level developer who didn't really grasp architecture design well. They got confused easily, asked questions that didn't make sense, and I had to explain things multiple times. It wasn't collaborative like they said it would be, and I doubt they'll give a positive evaluation. The coding round had problems from easy to hard, focusing on data structures and testing. The interviewer was pretty judgmental, pointing out flaws instead of being helpful. They said something like 'you should have asked that before you coded,' which felt unnecessary given how tough interviews are. During an advanced problem, I suggested a few ways to solve it because of the time limit, but they dismissed my ideas, only to later suggest something similar to what I proposed. When I mentioned it, they got defensive. They didn't even know a standard data structure, which is basic, but instead brought up something similar that was less efficient and poorly implemented. This showed they lacked knowledge of standard concepts and couldn't take feedback, which would be tough to work with. Overall, it was a tedious and pointless experience. I was contacted by their recruiter because my background and industry experience seemed like a fit, but the interview process felt like they were trying to disqualify me rather than see my strengths, with the senior devs conducting it.

I had multiple rounds of general leetcode-like questions, which were pretty standard. Then I was given a choice to either finish my interview process or do one more interview for their platform team, which was in urgent need. I chose the latter as the platform team's work sounded interesting. However, one of the interviewers seemed really uninterested from the start, barely talking or introducing himself. He just directed me to a HackerRank link. While I was coding, he kept interrupting me mid-line to ask about different parts of the problem, which really broke my concentration. If I asked for more details or to discuss something, he'd either ignore me or just repeat the question. I got stuck needing to check the syntax for a feature I don't use often. Usually, you can look up docs or ask the interviewer, but he refused to help. At that point, I knew I wasn't interested in working with him, so I suggested we end the interview. Only then did he seem to realize I was asking him anything, asking what the problem was. The other interviewer then chimed in with the correct syntax. Once fixed, the code passed. We all clearly wanted to wrap things up, so we ended it. My suggestion to Geocomply is to ensure interviewers actually want to be there, as they represent the company culture.

The hiring process was way too slow and unthoughtful. It took 7 weeks to hear back from them about the result of the second online assessment. The HR person asked if I still wanted to proceed to the next step (on-site) in the 2nd week of December (for January 2023), so I answered yes, and then the recruiter ghosted for another two weeks without answering follow-up emails. After 9 weeks, they emailed again, saying they decided to go to the next steps with other candidates. Unbelievable...