ISN Software Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process was well organized though a bit excessive in my opinion. It kicked off with an on-campus interview where they discussed my resume and asked some software engineering questions. Following that, there was a two-day event where they showcased the company's projects and full-time employee benefits, and their operations in France. While I enjoyed the two days and meeting people, the overall process felt too lengthy for an internship role. This round included a one-hour panel interview and a 1.5-hour coding session.

This was a really frustrating interview process, one of the worst I've experienced. There were nine interviews in total, with the final one supposed to be with the CEO. For most of it, the feedback was good, and I was told I was doing great. But things got weird near the end. One person said they didn't like how I spoke, which was odd after seven years of professional work with no such feedback. I was even told to "lower my bass" to avoid "spooking" someone before an interview. It felt unprofessional and maybe discriminatory. Still, I kept going, and the next interview went really well. The main problem happened in my second-to-last interview. The interviewer was 12 minutes late for a 15-minute meeting. I made a joke, saying, "No worries, it’s Thursday — clients usually send everything on Thursdays because they don’t want to be working on Fridays." Apparently, this was misunderstood. I was later told my final interview was canceled because they thought I didn't work on Fridays. After all the time spent on take-home assignments, panel presentations, and lots of prep, it was disappointing to have it end because of a small, harmless comment. The whole experience felt unfair, unprofessional, and lacking cultural awareness.

The interview process took about six weeks with several rounds. Sometimes the person scheduled to interview me didn't show up and was replaced without any heads-up. The talks mostly focused on really low-level code details and syntax, not so much on big-picture architecture or system design. For instance, instead of discussing trade-offs like when to use React versus .NET Blazor, the questions were like trivia, such as how to bind a click handler in React. On the cloud side, it was all about the tiny details of Azure Functions implementation, not really exploring the bigger picture of why or when you'd use Azure Functions at all.

I applied through Handshake and got selected for an on-campus screening by two ISN employees. Two weeks later, I was invited for a two-day in-house interview at ISN headquarters in Dallas. The first day involved learning about the company, touring the office, meeting employees, and discussing whether I'd be a good fit. The second day was more intense with a 2-minute presentation and seven fast-paced interviews with seven different people. I received an offer five days after the final interview.