IPSY Interview Questions
& Process

I applied online and they reached out to set up an initial screening call, but the invite link was missing and I had to chase them for it multiple times, getting it only at the scheduled time. This really set a bad tone. The initial call was short, we talked about the role but they didn't give me any info on what the rest of the interview process would be like, how many rounds, the format, or a timeline. Then, I had a 30-minute video call with the Hiring Manager. It started with a quick intro and then was mostly technical questions, with only the last few minutes for my questions. The coding round was the most chaotic. I scheduled it a week ahead, but then they suddenly canceled it on the day of the interview without telling me why. After I waited, they said it was because of a holiday, which is something they should have known and told me about way earlier. When we rescheduled, there was hardly any intro, and one of the interviewers kept their camera off the whole time. They gave me three coding problems on CoderPad. Instead of letting me finish them, they kept interrupting me to ask about my code line by line. Sometimes they'd move on to the next problem before I'd even finished the first one. It felt really rushed, and I'd sometimes only get a few seconds to think before they'd ask the next question.

I applied on LinkedIn and a week later got a video interview request. The recruiter seemed nice, but I wasn't sure if she was really paying attention to my answers. She asked me some technical questions, though it was clear she didn't really grasp what she was asking. A few days after that, I received a rejection email.

The whole thing took like over 2 weeks. First, there was a call with a manager or tech person. Then, three technical interviews, and finally a round with really basic questions. They asked me to 'define myself', 'where I see myself in 5 years', 'why I want to work here', and 'my biggest career challenge'. It was a long process, like 5 hours total, and honestly, it was super weird not to get any feedback at the end. Oh, and not a single woman was involved in interviewing me, which is pretty odd given most of their users are women.

I applied online and heard back from a recruiter about a week later. She scheduled a one-hour phone interview with an Engineering team member, mentioning I'd need a computer with internet for a technical screen. The interviewer called about 10 minutes late for the ~45-minute call. He started by briefly explaining the company's work in the beauty industry and their tech stack, then asked me to introduce myself and talk about my background. Afterward, he sent a Google Docs link with a problem statement. It involved a database manipulation task requiring record addition/deletion using transactional memory management. Even though I wasn't familiar with databases or transactional memory, I figured out the required functionality and coded it using object-oriented JavaScript. I thought I'd at least move to the next round, but three days later, I got a generic rejection email from the recruiter saying my skills weren't a fit for the role. It was pretty disappointing.