Rover.com Interview Questions
& Process

My experience with Rover's hiring process was a bit confusing. Although they initially presented a detailed interview plan, the process structure changed at the last minute, with phases being combined with very little notice. This inconsistency in the candidate's roadmap gives a feeling of internal improvisation that taints the applicant's experience. Be careful with the concept of "flexible hours". The most important thing for future candidates is time management. What they present as flexible hours is, in practice, an absolute dependence on the Seattle office: • Fixed late/evening meetings: There are recurring meetings starting at 6 PM (at least two days a week) that are immovable. • Shifted workday: On other days, you're expected to "adapt" to emerging needs. This actually means shifting your workday towards the afternoon/evening on a regular basis to overlap with US hours. • Work-life balance: This isn't flexibility designed for the employee, but a requirement for your personal life to adjust to headquarters' hours. In summary: If you value having a stable workday or finishing early, keep in mind that the priority here is Seattle's schedule, and that will affect your evenings almost daily.

First, they sent me some questions via email to answer. I didn't speak with HR at all. After that, I had an interview with the hiring manager. During the interview, they asked me a lot of questions about my experience and why I had made certain decisions. The questions were relevant, although the tone was very serious. Then, without any warning, they shared a link for me to do a live SQL coding test. I didn't like that they didn't inform me about the test. They also didn't explain their process or its stages to me. I was left with a bad feeling after the interview. The next day, they told me I wasn't moving forward. I won't consider Rover in the future; it didn't feel like they have a good environment.

The interview process was super organized, though it did take a while. Everyone I met was fantastic and made the interviews feel like a team effort, really comfortable. Recruiting was on top of communication. I got to meet the whole team, which honestly made me more excited to join. It started with a chat about behavior and an ML case study with the Hiring Manager. Then, I had a take-home task. After passing that, there was a technical check and a discussion about the take-home. The final part was a remote onsite loop with three interviews: another ML case study, stats, and a behavioral one.

This was a long process with 9 interviews in total. It started with an HR interview, then a manager interview. After that, there was a take-home assignment where I had to process a CSV file, perform calculations, and output a new CSV, which took about 4 hours for the task and another 12 hours to prepare with Docker and unit tests. Then came a panel interview for system design. Following that was a behavioral interview with the initial manager and an additional manager from another team. The process also included another take-home project involving coding where I had to implement a new requirement in front of two engineers.