Tessella Interview Questions
& Process

The first interview was a phone call that lasted about an hour. We talked about my interest in the role and some basic coding questions. It felt pretty relaxed, more like a chat. The second interview was a full day at the Abingdon office, starting at 9 AM and wrapping up around 4 PM. A big part of the day involved a programming task I worked on, with breaks for presentations and lunch. I also had to give a short presentation on a topic of my choice to show my presentation skills. Lunch was at a pub with a staff member, and I got to see a presentation about what the company does. The day ended with me presenting the coding task I completed. The coding task itself wasn't too hard, though working with the internet for it was a new experience for me.

The first interview was fine, we talked about my experience and interest in the role. The second interview was a full day, from 9 am to 3 pm. It started with a coding exercise, a password generator problem to test coding skills. Then I spoke with various staff members, some for small talk and others to discuss my projects. After lunch, my coding exercise was reviewed. Following that, I gave a presentation on a prepared topic to a senior staff member, and then had final talks. It was a good experience, though a bit long. I didn't receive feedback after being informed I was unsuccessful, which felt disrespectful given the preparation time.

The interview in Italy had 3 parts. It started with a phone call where they asked about my interest, some project info, etc. Then there was a technical test that I had 4 hours to complete. They gave me unbalanced, not totally clean data and asked me to do classification, and they provided info about the data and classes. Finally, they called me again to go over my results and code and asked some follow-up why and how questions.

It was a pretty standard interview process, starting with a 30-minute phone screen and then a full day of interviews. The phone screen involved talking about my background and some basic C++ programming questions, like the difference between vectors and arrays and how pointers function. The interviewer mostly used that time to explain the role and the company. The in-person interviews were at their main office in Abingdon. The day included a 30-minute math/data science interview that wasn't too difficult, followed by a programming assignment. The assignment was long and focused on architecture design, specifically classes and inheritance, and didn't require algorithm knowledge. It used old C++98 and an 8-year-old version of gcc. The rest of the day involved lunch with a senior project manager, a short presentation I had prepared, a demo of one of their projects, and a quick HR chat. There were hardly any questions about cultural fit. I had to complete a personality test and send it back, which I didn't do, and it apparently didn't impact my application, raising questions about unnecessary bureaucracy. I left feeling like I hadn't really been interviewed, meaning I couldn't showcase my strengths. Since it's a software engineering role, there was no face-to-face coding interview. The entire process from applying to getting an offer took over four months, with long waits between stages. I eventually turned down the offer for a better package elsewhere with a better feel for the work and office. Tessella clearly puts effort into recruiting, but their compensation doesn't reflect a strong interest in keeping good people.