Ranker Interview Questions
& Process

I was reached out to by a recruiter for this role. We had an amazing conversation and shortly thereafter, I was passed along to who would be the direct manager for a 45 minute conversation. After completion, I spoke with the CFO for about 30 minutes. The process was simple and they asked great questions but it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth that I never heard anything past meeting with the CFO. I reached out to the initial recruiter, was told they'd be making a decision soon, and then got ghosted. The company seems great, the people I spoke to were kind, but the way it ended doesn't make me feel confident about how they manage situations or their own employees.

Applied via LinkedIn, recruiter hit me up a week later. Recruiter thought I was overqualified but the CEO wanted to chat since they might expand the role to fit my skills. Recruiter set up a call with the CEO a few days later. We had a good call, and he wanted to talk again in a few days about expanding the role and how I could help build the brand. He said the recruiter would schedule it. That never happened. I reached out to the recruiter multiple times and mostly got ghosted. The only reply I got weeks later was asking when the CEO and I last spoke, and they would follow up with him on next steps. They never rejected me for the original role or mentioned if the expanded role was off the table. After the CEO suggested another chat in 'a week or so,' the recruiter never set anything up. I've emailed the recruiter several times with no reply. While I appreciate Ranker considering me for an expanded role, being ghosted is not cool.

So after I applied online, the whole thing took about 4 weeks. It was a few edit tests, one paid writing gig ($50 for 2000 words), and then 2 interviews. First test was sending in pitches and editing some published stuff. Then they picked one pitch and I had to write a 2000+ word article on it, following their style guide and image attribution rules, which they paid $50 for. After that, a phone interview. Then, an unpaid 8-hour timed edit test where I had to edit 4 unpublished articles (about 2000 words each) to get them ready for the site. Finally, an in-person interview with the team.

I got an online editing test first. It involved editing a post from the Ranker website and also editing user-submitted stories on a Google Doc. For the website post, I had to rank headlines, make sure images were credited, and check grammar and consistency with Ranker's style. The Google Doc part was similar but took longer, and I really had to follow their style guide closely.