ShipHawk Interview Questions
& Process

I talked to the VP of Engineering over Zoom. He was really chill and the interview went smoothly. It started with me just talking about my background, mainly Rails and full-stack stuff. Then he hit me with some technical questions, starting with basic Ruby and then getting harder, asking about things like meta-programming, threads, databases, and ElasticSearch, all based on what I'd done. It was cool though, we actually had a good chat about tech and he even gave me the answers when I was stumped. You definitely need to know your languages and programming concepts inside out because he's super knowledgeable and can discuss it all.

First up was this 10 minute phone screen with a senior exec who's mostly into finance and ops, not sales. He chatted about how this 10 min interview thing is a new experiment for them. He asked why I'd be considered a superstar, which was a bit much given the short time. He mentioned they were interviewing tons of candidates but said he'd move me forward because of my background, etc. Then, radio silence. Not shocking given their base pay isn't great for experienced AEs, and the company reviews aren't the best, which I kinda get after that call.

I got recruited through the career fair at UCSB. The first step was a quick chat on campus with two developers. They gave me a simple coding problem and then we chatted about ShipHawk. After that, I had an online coding challenge with two problems, which I had about an hour to complete. One problem was pretty easy, but the other was really hard. The final stage was an onsite interview, mostly to see if I'd be a good fit for the team. During the onsite, I got to shadow some developers.

The interview process was very smooth and I got a good feel for the company culture. It's important to know a bit about the company and what problems they solve for businesses. Also, be ready to talk about your experience with the role's requirements and have a story about how you've used those skills before.