Mintel Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

First, I had a chat with the director/head. Then, there was a technical interview with a principal engineer. This involved a code test where they read out questions, and I had to write the logic and talk about my technical experience.

The interview process felt a bit disorganized. My first phone interview got rescheduled an hour beforehand, and then pushed back by three weeks. After that, I had a coding test that was supposed to take 25 minutes but I spent two hours on it. Then, a lead developer called and went over my mistakes on the code test, helping me fix them. The in-person interview was in a small room with three interviewers who asked really specific, obscure JavaScript questions, even though I mentioned I've only been using it for about a year. They asked how I'd style a printed page, expecting me to say 'use fonts as icons,' which I thought was bad practice. They didn't like my suggestion of using SVGs. I also heard they were using SVN and thinking of moving to Git, which was a dealbreaker for me since I've dealt with that before. The office looked like a bad warehouse. After the interviews, I sent about 13 follow-up emails over four weeks, mostly getting responses saying the lead was on vacation and they'd get back to me later. It was a waste of time.

It began with a recruiter call to get to know me and discuss the company. They also shared the salary range for junior developers upfront, which was helpful. Then, there was a coding test that wasn't too difficult, mainly multiple-choice with a few simple coding questions at the end. After that, I had a call with an engineering manager who asked about my coding test answers to ensure I did it myself. He also asked me to discuss a past project. The final step was an in-person interview with the engineering manager and two software engineers where they asked about projects and reviewed some code with me. I didn't have to write any code during this last interview.