SoftLayer Interview Questions
& Process

Overall I would say this process was very horrible. Not only did they take for ever and getting back to me, but when I showed up the directors and other leadership there were very pompous and stuck up. All the negative reviews here that employees give is true. Their leadership is so disconnected from what is going on in the industry and what a solutions engineer is real looking for in a workplace that it's no wonder that they retain subpart talent. I was interviewing with the person named Kelly, and his organization definitely did not impress me. I had already accepted an offer with their primary competitor, but was just going to give them the chance of a counter offer. Very very glad that I did not wait until they made an offer to accept their competitors.

So after I got buzzed in and got my visitor badge, a manager met me and we went upstairs to a conference room. Then, I had a face-to-face interview with a Director and 3 Managers. They introduced themselves and let me talk about each part of my resume. They asked questions about different things I've done, and then some to get a feel for my personality and what I'm interested in. When we finished, they took me on a quick tour of the place, explaining each department. During the tour, I was dropped off to chat briefly with the VP of Development. The tour finished up and I was walked back to the front desk to return my badge.

I applied to Softlayer(IBM) back in June, and they reached out in August to ask about my salary needs and availability for an interview. The hiring manager from Softlayer in Dallas gave me a call the next day. Even though I'm in Washington D.C., the job was in Chantilly, Va, at their data center, which the recruiter mentioned was probably the newer one. Most communication will be via email. I thought there would be a phone interview followed by an in-person one, but it was entirely over the phone. They asked about my experience with data entry, shipping and receiving, and my proficiency with Microsoft Excel on a scale of one to ten. I rated myself a 5, which didn't seem to impress him at first, but I explained that Best Buy uses a different system and I have a lot to learn. He seemed to accept that and then focused on my auditing skills, which I assured him I excel at, mentioning my experience with three companies including Gamestop. He stressed the importance of auditing in a data center role. He ended by saying they'd be in touch, and I asked about the dress code, which felt like a good sign. We shared a joke about the Redskins before ending the call. The very next day, a different recruiter extended an offer that was a dollar higher than my initial salary expectation, and I'm set to start next week.

I had an initial phone screen with general personality questions like "why are you looking to switch" and some basic technical questions. The in-person interview was about an hour and a half. The first half hour was with managers, focusing more on personality, asking things like "what book most influenced you" and about my past work, including challenges. The second hour was a technical interview with developers. Since I interviewed for the interface team, I got a lot of JavaScript, jQuery, and PHP questions. One question was about using XML over JSON with XmlHttpRequest. I also got asked about SQL, like the difference between JOIN and LEFT JOIN. My advice is to really know what you put on your resume.