Soraa Interview Questions
& Process

It took 6 weeks total. I was first contacted by a recruiter on Linkedin, and then got passed to another recruiter who worked onsite. I had a 30min phone chat with the second recruiter, followed by another phone interview with a mechanical engineer. Then, I came in for an onsite interview where I gave a 45min presentation about myself and my past work. After that, I had 6 one-on-one interviews with people from different teams. A week later, I came back onsite for another one-on-one. One weird thing was that I wasn't asked if I had any questions for them until I talked to the fourth person. I had to jump in after they finished asking theirs. Also, there seemed to be a general confusion about what the role actually entailed, with senior and executive management giving me mixed messages about their goals and what they needed in a candidate. Coordination was also pretty bad; I got only 48 hours notice for both onsite interviews, and the first one was supposed to be all day. I managed to negotiate it down to a half day, but I still had to make up an excuse to my current job, which wasn't ideal. Some things that really shocked me: 4 out of the 7 people I interviewed with in person had been at the company for less than a year. I was told they had fired 2 mechanical engineers about 6 months ago because of money problems. Someone actually said, "Most of us are here for the pay day." They just launched their first product last month and are hoping to become self-sufficient by the end of the year. Overall, I have mixed feelings about them. They gave off an air of thinking they were a big deal and that I should feel lucky to be considered. It made me want to quit multiple times because of that attitude. Honestly, they're a bit too big for their britches; they're not Google yet!

It was a pretty straightforward interview process. Started with one telephone interview, then moved to two face to face interviews. One of those was with additional management team members. The interviews focused a lot on what I thought we could achieve in the first year of sales. There were some differing expectations with the CEO at the time, and we discussed that, along with some disagreements about routes to market, but it was all handled professionally. HR then handled the final negotiation and contract really fast and efficiently. Overall, it was a positive experience.

If you are looking to get into Engineering, brace yourself for a lot of interviews from about 7 or 8 people. This includes a couple of management levels who don't seem that interested, a technical person or two, customer service staff, and a bunch of Engineers. They are all decent folks, mostly knowledgeable about Power Design, but each has their preferred technical questions. If you don't give them the answers they're looking for, they'll reject you immediately during the review. The entire team gets together and everyone gets a say. I've heard so many times things like, "He didn't even know that in a ZVS H-Bridge with PFC and a 2700 Watt load you should always use ultra-fast diodes on the reverse recovery lossless Snubber when the leakage inductance is not less than the square root of the functional capacitive discharge in sub-zero temperatures! I vote NO!" So, make sure you know your stuff and can at least respond with something like, "Well, yes, but have you tried Silicon Carbide devices in the Hi-Side gate drive? That sometimes reduces the need for lossless snubbers altogether...?"

The interview process involved a group presentation followed by several one-on-one meetings. It mostly focused on my past work experience and background, with some questions delving into the technical specifics of my previous projects. The entire interview process lasted for a full day.