Unsupervised Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process was fairly standard for a remote position. Initial screening, meet with head of HR, meet with CEO and I think there would have been a few more steps but here is where things go wrong. Immediately after my interview with the CEO I reach out to the recruiter (who is an employee not an outside recruiter). I received a “thanks I’ll be in touch in a few days”. I hear nothing after four or five days and reach out. Still no follow up. A couple days later I send another email…just checking in not sure if you received my last email”. Still nothing in response. This is all in the very beginning of the month. I finally receive a very nice email 2 days ago saying they have gone with the other candidate she told me about (didn’t happen). What occurred was three weeks of no follow up at all. I provide feedback saying it would have been nice to have had my inquiries responded to even if the answers were “no updates yet, we are trying our best to move things along”. Well she decided to respond not with mea culpa, but with what she seems to think are “receipts” asking if I recall when she spoke to me mid month she told me she’d get back to me in five days. Apologies she was a few days beyond that. Only she never had that conversation or any other with me. She gave a date and I tell her no we didn’t chat but I do show a missed call from you the following day with no message. Here’s my issue. Wires get crossed it happens but take accountability. You confused conversations or noted you spoke to me and it was actually someone else. I felt bad for giving for feedback when she thought we spoke and told her as much. Again let’s insert a time when you could have been respectful of me and my time and sent an acknowledgment of the error. (I was on Jury Duty on the day in question but still checked my phone records just in case!) Nothing. The only communication in the 3 weeks was the missed call (which I returned the next Monday but also didn’t leave a message. Based on the lack of follow up I wasn’t interested). My suggestion would be to ensure if your response is one of bringing receipts instead of a more generic, pleasant professional one you should be factual. Once you realize you’re wrong acknowledge it. Looking for a position is time consuming and can be stressful. My time is valuable and to have a candidate completely in the dark for weeks is not ok, but the response was worse. If this is an indicator of the way the company or its representatives handle things I’m glad I didn’t move forward. I would be fuming if one of my company’s recruiting team responded to a candidate like this.

I applied online and they got back to me within a week. The initial email didn't say much about what to expect or who I would be talking to. I found out the person who emailed me was the Director of the org. Since Unsupervised is a small company, I figured they were the hiring manager. I'm glad I was ready because, just as I thought, the first interview felt more like a second round, which could surprise some folks. The interview was pretty straightforward. They asked me to talk about my experience, why I wanted to work at Unsupervised, and what I was looking for (and not looking for) in a new job. Then, they asked me to list 10 strengths and 5 weaknesses (ugh). I don't know about anyone else, but this question really bugged me, not the question itself, but the point behind it. I figured most employers want examples and context, not just a list of words, so most candidates would be prepped for some version of this, but not a specific number. After giving the 3-4 strengths I always have ready, plus a couple I thought of on the spot, I didn't bother trying to make up more and just moved on. I think the interviewer was unhappy and saw it as a missed question, focusing on the fact that it wasn't 'complete' instead of the strengths I did give. I feel like this was intentional, which just showed me how unprofessional this company is when it comes to hiring. They left me about 3 minutes for questions and quickly went over the 'next steps.' I was not impressed and not upset that I didn't move forward.

I had a direct call with one of the co-founders for the first interview. He asked about my experience and requested some samples of my work over email. However, there has been no response or follow-up after a few weeks. The co-founder claims that the company currently has no issues finding Fortune 500 clients for its product. But I was left with a feeling of skepticism at best. The company's website is littered with typos. There's no proof-of-concept or demonstration of its "revolutionary" machine-learning platform. The only source cited on their website is a reference to a random CIO corner magazine article, which is a spam magazine based out of India.

Had a 1 hr phone screen with the recruiter to go over what they are looking for. Then a 1.5 hr coding exercise where they described a system and I had to design data structures and an API, and talk about trade-offs and extensibility. After that, a 1 hr code review session where I brought a code sample I liked. We talked about my project plan approach, logic, coding choices, and compromises. They mentioned this interview was a bit experimental so it got pretty open-ended. Lastly, a 1 hr cultural discussion with 'Tell me about a time...' questions. The team is doing great work and is a good size to join. They gave me a strong offer, only beaten by another stronger one. The only thing that surprised me was having to screen share and run code on my local machine for the coding challenge, not using an online IDE. Luckily I had a local setup ready, but it could catch others off guard.