On Deck (CA) Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process included an initial recruiter call, followed by an interview with a team member, then a case study exercise. After that, there was an interview with the hiring manager, and finally, a call with HR to assess cultural fit. Each of these interviews lasted between 30 minutes and an hour, except for the first recruiter call, which was not a video interview.

The hiring process generally seems to involve: (1) an intro chat with the hiring manager or a recruiter, (2) a take-home case study followed by an interview, (3) peer interviews, (4) interviews with a senior leader who’s a stakeholder for the role, and (5) an interview with the recruitment team about culture-fit and terms. Overall, my experience was very positive. It felt like the team was invested in ensuring the role was a good fit for me (aspirations, culture) as much as evaluating if I was the right candidate for On Deck. Interviewers were very open about priorities, what they were looking for, and what it’s like to work at On Deck (including framing of Non-Values, i.e., why you might not enjoy working there, which I’ve not seen before). The downside is the hiring process took longer than I’m used to, but you can communicate personal timelines to your internal recruiter.

I found the job on Linkedin and applied on the company website in mid-Jan 2022. The hiring manager reached out within 4 days to schedule a Zoom interview (20 min). It was pretty easy. She contacted me again within 24-48 hours after the first interview and asked me to do a collaborative assignment with her on Google Docs. You have 45 minutes for the task. She'll then review it, suggest changes, and you'll implement them. The whole thing should take less than an hour. Next up was an interview with an Executive, the Senior Vice President of Revenue in my case. It wasn't a bad interview, they want to gauge your fit with the company and your career aspirations. That's where my process concluded.

The interview process was really strange and the interviewer made several HR mistakes. First, there was a phone/video interview which was like a screening call but felt rushed and the interviewer seemed inexperienced. I still gave great answers with examples and insight, and asked thoughtful questions that unintentionally highlighted the interviewer's inexperience. Next was a take-home assignment that went poorly. The assignment was LONG, and the email said it should take no more than 3 hours and to share the doc. It was definitely longer than 3 hours and the questions were actual business cases and examples they wanted solved — unpaid work. I did the assignment but chose not to share access until the follow-up interview, which was a presentation style and scheduled anyway. The night before my follow-up interview, at 5 AM, I got an email canceling it because I hadn't shared access to the Google Doc containing my free work. I really wanted the role, and the interviewer pressured me to give her access to my work to move me forward, so I did. The interview was still canceled, and I later heard from others that parts of my work were used for the next cohort operations. The role stayed open for over a year, and another woman of color shared a similar experience of tons of unpaid work in a take-home assignment, no interview, and the interviewer taking her files.