ParentSquare Interview Questions
& Process

I had several really good conversations, including a few interviews and a chat with some of the top leaders. The people I talked to seemed really into what they're doing and how it makes a difference. But, after putting in a lot of effort and time, they just stopped talking to me with no explanation or update. It's kind of weird because they're all about making communication better in schools, and then they didn't communicate well with me. I think they could get better by letting candidates know what's up or giving them some closure, especially after a bunch of interviews. Good communication really shows what a company is about, both to outsiders and insiders.

The interview process went smoothly until the very last stage. Even though I've been a Product Designer for over 20 years and held design director leadership roles for more than 10 years, the interviewer became really defensive when looking at my work history. When I brought up that I usually stay at companies for about 2 years, I explained that it's typical in tech startups for design teams to be reorganized after products launch, or when mergers and acquisitions happen. Instead of understanding that this is normal in the industry, the interviewer called it a "red flag" and it seemed like they didn't really get how product design careers usually go in tech. The whole conversation felt more like an interrogation than a real interview, and it made me wonder about the company's leadership and if I'd fit in culturally. The good parts were that the earlier interviews were fine. The bad parts were that the last interview was unprofessional and confrontational, showing a weird attitude towards normal career paths in the industry. They also seemed to not understand how things work in the tech industry, especially with design teams. My advice to management would be to train your leaders on hiring practices and career paths in the tech industry. A more collaborative interview style would help them evaluate candidates better and represent the company well. I wouldn't recommend this company based on this experience, especially for senior roles where they should value industry experience.

Started with a quick chat with a senior person to check for cultural fit and interest. Then, I had to do a 'bug squash' where I cloned a repo with a bug shown by a failing unit test, and my job was to fix it, demonstrating my debugging and communication skills. The main part involved three one-hour sessions. The first was about app design, specifically creating a basic traffic light system to show design and collaboration abilities. The second was a computer science and algorithms challenge, testing knowledge of Big O, sorting, and data structures. The third was an open-ended system design question: 'How would you design an event capture system?', which evaluated understanding of application architectures, DevOps concepts like load balancing and background jobs, and databases. Finally, there was a 30-minute wrap-up with another senior person to discuss feedback on the interview and ask any remaining questions.

They had me record answers to some basic behavioral questions first, then a call with a recruiter. After that was a panel interview with two managers and the director. They mentioned there's an assessment and a final interview with the VP, which I didn't get to but was told about. The panel interview itself was pretty good; everyone seemed prepared and friendly, and they were engaged. The only downsides were the digital pre-interview thing, talking to a camera, which is a bit of a drag, but I guess that's how it is now. Also, I never got any feedback from the recruiter, just a standard rejection email, which is a bummer because some feedback would be helpful for improvement.