Inspire Interview Questions
& Process

This was by far the worst recruiting experience of my career. After putting me through 8 interviews (some of which had to be rescheduled more than once) I then had to complete a 1-week long corporate development exercise culminating in a 1-hour presentation. I spent 80+ hours preparing for this presentation because the prompt was so unnecessarily broad. Way too much work and when I finally got the offer the comp was laughable and they refused to negotiate. They were also cagey about options and offered a crappy strike price. Lowballing good talent, not being transparent about the full comp package, and rudely ignoring candidates when they try to negotiate in good faith is not the way to build a successful business.

The interview process with Inspire was quick and thoughtful. I was reached out to within a few days of submitting my application and the hiring manager was informative and responsive throughout the entire process. Everyone I talked to was engaged and friendly. In terms of technical interview, it is a bit unique because instead of tech questions during your onsite, you get a take home assignment to complete that is then used as a launching point for the following onsite interviews. Honestly I really liked this approach since it gauges your actual development skills a lot better, but it was also a bit stressful since you're not sure what they're looking for in the assignment and it's very open ended. Also, I don't like how it was very specific to knowledge of Ruby on Rails instead of overall development knowledge, although I guess it makes sense since they use this framework extensively. Overall I thought the interview process felt a lot more natural than most tech interviews, but I would have liked if I was given a heads up to prep a bit for Ruby on Rails beforehand. I honestly had to spend quite a bit of time just setting up the template and installing postgres...

I had a phone interview that was pretty standard and lasted about 20 minutes. Then, a few days later, I went in for an in-person interview. This was a long one, about two hours. I met with my potential supervisor, two people in similar roles, and one higher-up on Skype. They asked standard questions like 'tell me about yourself,' 'how you found the job,' 'why you're interested,' and 'what you can bring to the company.' I felt like I connected well and answered everything well. They said I'd hear back by the end of the next week. After ten days plus four more, I still hadn't heard anything, so I sent a general email asking for an update, but got no response. Three weeks after the interview, I sent another email about the delay, mentioning they were busy. A few days later, they apologized for the delay due to being busy. The next week, I got a rejection email saying they went with someone who better fit their needs. I thanked them and asked for feedback to improve for the future, but never heard back. While I understand companies get busy, not responding to emails, especially when they claim to have great customer service, is concerning. It makes me nervous when employers don't take interviewing and follow-ups seriously.

The interview process was long and had some delays, with a few months passing between initial contact and the next step. It involved online meetings with team members and an in-person interview at the Santa Monica office. The interviewers were nice and asked fair questions, though I felt they might not have had direct experience with market research roles. They later provided feedback on areas where I fell short, which I appreciated but disagreed with. The job posting was removed during this time and reappeared later, leading me to question the company's certainty about the position. Expect multiple stages, which they call due diligence, but I found them to be indecisive.