Phorest Salon Software Interview Questions
& Process

Their interview process is quite antiquated and I think this process should be reassessed, especially depending on the role and if it’s a permanent position. I interviewed for a contract maternity cover position. First round with HR. Second with hiring manager. Third was a task I had to complete. All pretty normal. Fourth they required a mental agility test and word personality test. This is the portion I think is unnecessary and outdated. I spoke to many friends who work at Google, Meta, etc (harder, more sought after companies) and they all thought that step was ridiculous. After all that, I didn’t hear anything back and only heard back that I didn’t receive the position after I reached out. Asked for feedback and haven’t received anything. The people were nice, I just think that it’s unnecessary to make people go through all that and then not communicate the reasons why. Especially unnecessary for a lower level position and one that isn’t even permanent.

Everyone I spoke to was nice and prepared, but there was no follow-up or timelines. I was told 3-4 weeks for the first call, but got a generic rejection after 2.5 months. I had to chase for updates, often multiple times. After I gave references, they took three weeks to contact just one of the three. It left a bad impression because the hiring process was so inefficient and chaotic. I felt my time was wasted and I had to work harder than I should have to pursue this job. Not everyone has 2.5 months to wait, and you're losing good people with these long processes. Also, please give feedback when rejecting someone after such a long time. I feel disrespected and can't recommend Phorest.

So I went through the hiring process at Phorest and wanted to share what happened. The beginning part, before the assignment, was pretty nice and professional, felt like they really care about their culture. But the home assignment was way more than I expected. It was like a whole consulting gig and took a ton of time and effort, way more than usual for this point in hiring. I get they need to check people out, but it felt more like they wanted free work than to test my skills. If you're applying, make sure you know exactly what's expected of an assignment and if the time it takes fits with what else you've got going on, especially if you're looking at other jobs too. I think if they made the assessments a bit more balanced, it would show more respect for our time and what we know. Hope this helps make things clearer for the next folks.

So the whole thing was 3 stages, spaced out on different days. First was HR, they went over the company and the role at a high level. It was a pretty chill chat to see if I was a fit. Then the Engineering Manager stage, with two people from the team who dove deeper into the role. They asked stuff about APIs and Events, and about payment processors like Stripe, PayPal, Square, and also gave a quick SQL problem to solve while screen sharing. The last stage was a chat with one of those same Engineering Managers and an Engineering Director. This one was more like the HR interview, focusing on my background and how I thought I'd fit with the team and the job. Everyone I talked to was really professional and easy to chat with. It felt pretty relaxed and was a good experience overall.