The Athletic Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process was pretty long, with 4 rounds total. First, there was a pre-screening interview which I passed. Then, I had a coding exam on CoderPad, which also went well. After that, I did a case study and a presentation, but unfortunately, I didn't pass the presentation part, though the interviewer said the case study itself looked good. The final round was a meeting with the team.

This was a really drawn-out process, spanning about 3-4 weeks. First, after applying, I had to complete a social media task that took a couple of hours and involved several parts. If that went well, I had an in-person interview at their branch, which I think went well. The interviewers were nice and asked good questions relevant to the role and my potential contributions. The final round was a four-person interview with colleagues in the US. This was also quite long, and they focused on questions about their specific roles and how we could collaborate, especially since the job involves working on American sports content.

I had one initial call, then a design test, and finally a day with four remote interviews. While I didn't get the job, I really liked talking to everyone. Honestly, I wish I hadn't spent so much time and creative energy on this process for my own sanity, but no hard feelings!

It started with a recruiter reaching out, pretty standard stuff. First, a recruiter call, then a behavioral chat with the Director of Engineering. After that, there was a take-home project, which was supposed to be followed by a panel interview with engineers to go over the take-home. Honestly, their hiring process is super slow. It took a couple of weeks just to get the behavioral interview set up, but it seemed to go okay. Then things went sideways. They sent over the take-home project, giving me 7 days to finish it, and said they'd schedule the panel afterward. I submitted the project around day 4-5. That's when the silence started. I'd check in with the recruiter weekly, and they'd say they were having trouble coordinating schedules with their teams in Australia and the UK. Then the holidays hit, so nothing got scheduled. About a week after New Year's, I followed up again, asking about the panel and mentioning I had other offers progressing towards completion (which was true). Right after that, I got a blunt rejection from the recruiter, just saying they were moving forward with other candidates. I put a lot of work into the take-home, and this rejection felt like a big shift from how things were before the holidays. I asked the recruiter for feedback on the take-home, but they said they'd look into it and then never replied. In my opinion, they're really bad at communicating, and I feel like I dodged a bullet. I suspect they weren't actually hiring, given the job posting was up for ages.