SevOne Interview Questions
& Process

The whole interview thing was pretty cool and they were upfront about everything. I got a call from HR first, which was standard but nice. Then I talked to the hiring manager, and we got into the details about the job and my experience. I also got to chat with another front end dev, which was super helpful. We talked about the tech stack and what it's like to work on the team. The onsite interview was pretty chill. You work on a problem with someone from the team to see how you think, then you have a chat with the hiring manager. It lasted about 3 hours total. They really seem to like open and honest communication, which was a nice change.

I got a call from a recruiter, and we chatted. Then, I went to their office for an in-person interview. It started off well, with the hiring manager asking me about 20 Linux questions, which I nailed. I also talked more about my background, and it seemed to align with their projects. After about 45 minutes, the hiring manager was happy and wanted me to talk to someone from their Philly office. That person joined via the conference room TV, and the hiring manager introduced us, thinking we'd chat for 30 minutes. But once the hiring manager left, it went south. The Philly guy asked me to whiteboard how I'd build a super available and scalable app. I started drawing, but after five minutes, he couldn't see it well because the camera quality wasn't great. I offered to explain it verbally, which he agreed to. But as I was explaining, he got distracted by his laptop and just stopped listening. Two weeks later, I heard back: the hiring manager liked me, but the rest of the team found other candidates. Funny enough, over a year later, I've gotten three emails from different recruiters there saying they want to interview me. Their turnover must be crazy, so I'm not going back.

The interview process started with a Hackerrank test containing 6 questions, which I finished on the same day. After about a month, I had a telephonic round where they asked some basic questions about my experience and the difference between Java and C++. This was followed by an onsite interview that lasted 2 hours. The onsite involved two face-to-face rounds, each with three interviewers: a project manager, a junior developer, and a senior developer. The first face-to-face round was about 45 minutes, with mostly basic questions about my experience and not many technical ones. The second face-to-face round lasted 65 minutes. The interviewers were quite relaxed and wanted to verify my claimed knowledge. They grilled me for a long time, and I felt I answered almost all the questions. I wonder why, with my experience, they didn't figure this out before inviting me for the face-to-face, as it felt like a complete waste of time for everyone involved.

So I had 3 interviews for a Senior Technical Lead role in Singapore. Two were technical and one was with the hiring manager. I did really well in all of them, especially the managerial round, so I was pretty confident. But after 10 days, they told me they filled the position internally. It's super frustrating when they interview external people knowing they plan to hire internally - felt like a total waste of my time. They even asked for my referee names. I tried to get some feedback on my interview performance but got no response. Honestly, I'm so disappointed with Sevone, a startup that's been around for 10 years. Sevone, if you're going to hire internally, just don't waste external candidates' time and give us false hope.