Hamilton Group Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

It was a 2-stage phone screening process, audio-only. They asked about my background and accomplishments, but no technical interview questions. After that, I got an offer for a final onsite interview, which had about 5 interviews and lasted roughly 5 hours. I'd rate this as a negative experience overall because the reason I wasn't hired was a lack of technical skills, which they only asked about after 2 weeks during the onsite interview, not sooner. This led to getting my hopes up and going through a 5-hour interview process that turned out to be mostly irrelevant. Asking the disqualifying technical questions upfront would have saved everyone time.

They asked me to talk about myself, and then we dove into technical stuff about data structures and OOP. After that, they asked me more about specific things on my resume that caught their eye.

The interview process was quite sensible, although it took a considerable amount of time from application to the final decision, spanning over two months. It included a phone interview, a remote chat, a coding assignment to be done at home, followed by a live interview featuring a whiteboard task, and concluded with another remote chat with the department lead. Everyone involved was very pleasant, and I found the questions to be engaging, not overly difficult but not too easy either. There were no issues with either HR or the technical team. Ultimately, the negotiation came down to compensation; the offer was significantly lower than my current salary and not competitive at all, even less than my starting salary in Switzerland years ago. I expressed my willingness to accept if they could increase the offer slightly, and they indicated they would look into it. Three days later, they presented the final offer without any increase. Curiously, the job advertisement reappeared shortly after I declined. It seems like an inefficient approach, as a recruitment process lasting over four months likely incurs more costs than offering a candidate a slightly better salary. My recommendation would be to discuss salary expectations earlier in the process, as it's disappointing to receive an offer that's 20% lower after dedicating hours to four interview stages spread across two months. The benefits package, however, was excellent, among the best I've been offered.