Hallmark Labs Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process overall moved pretty slowly. It didn't bother me, but it might not work for everybody's schedule. The worst part was the in-person interview with two Senior SDETs. It was really bad and I felt insulted by it. First, the parts that weren't intentionally bad: People can't stop complaining about their InfoSec team, which is unprofessional during an interview. One of the Senior SDETs didn't seem like a senior at all. He made a weird comment saying all SDETs learn coding through Robot Framework. I'm not sure about the second SDET, but he was apparently in charge of hiring and interviewing the first one, which makes you wonder about his judgment. It's a technical role, but there was no coding, no whiteboarding, no algorithms or design questions, and no real problem-solving exercises. The only related question was about dealing with a bad InfoSec team. Honestly, get over it. A lot of the interview focused on questions like "I didn't read your resume" type questions, asking to list tools and languages. The rest were simple yes/no questions about whether I'd heard of certain things. The second SDET's English wasn't great, making it hard to understand his questions and for him to understand my answers. The first SDET tried to help clarify, but his explanations didn't match the original questions. The truly offensive part: Later, I found out they claimed I said things I never said, or that were the opposite of what I stated. Some topics they mentioned didn't even come up. It was a complete misrepresentation. I don't know if it was intentional, poor listening, or just messing around, but I've never had an interview like it. The next day, I had another interview elsewhere, and it was a completely different experience in terms of quality.

Started with a recruiter call about the job. Then a hiring manager interview for about an hour, discussing past projects. After a few days, I went to the office for a 3-hour face-to-face interview with 5-6 people (PMs, devs, DevOps, manager, director) that included some whiteboard discussions. Then I waited about a week for a coding project, which involved database design, development, and testing, with justifications for the design choices. I had 3 days to complete it but finished in 2 or less. Overall, the process was very smooth and HR did a good job.

While there are some great people there, they have a hard time finding good people for a reason, especially with the ridiculously high turnover which they explain away by saying that 'it wasn't the right fit' or 'they couldn't cut it.' If you're interviewing for this company, these answers shouldn't be good enough for you - try to get to the bottom of why people are leaving. During your interviews, also ask them why they're choosing to stay, what 3 adjectives they'd use to describe the culture, and on a scale of 1-10 where this company ranks in terms of how they are being treated compared to everywhere else they've worked. There's no formal HR, just contractors who help recruit. This will be an important gap later on if you decide to work there - i.e. what if you have HR questions? (this is by design so that if you're unhappy with anything HR related, then you have to either deal with it or leave.) I'd say it's more important for you to get your questions answered than to worry about what they'll ask you.

It was a pretty smooth initial interview process. It started off with the usual call with the recruiter, then moved to a technical screening with the VP of Tech. After that, I was brought on site for an interview. The office is lovely, and the culture seems friendly and positive. I interviewed with 4 people, and they were all a pleasure to talk to. I do wish their communication after the interview was a bit more professional, though, as no one replied to my email a week later when I was just looking for an update. An offer wasn't extended, but overall, the interview process felt smooth.