Urban Interview Questions
& Process

I was contacted on Linkedin by Laura Haynes, Head of People & Talent, who had a very friendly and polite style. She then set up a phone interview since she is based in London and I was in Vienna. The call went well, although I found the English accent a bit challenging to understand. She asked me to complete a business case assignment, which is not common practice in Austria, but I spent about 4 hours on it and sent it to her as a PowerPoint presentation. We then had another call with her and Sascha Woelk (COO), also based in London, where I presented my business case. It was a bit tough due to limited time, and I felt I couldn't present it as professionally as I wanted, plus it was hard to understand everything on speakerphone. Laura and Sascha seemed impressed and scheduled another call with Jack, one of the founders. I really enjoyed talking to Jack; he was kind, driven, and asked some original questions, not the typical ones. After this call, Laura contacted me to say they wanted to hire me and sent an offer via email. I accepted and am now a happy team member.

Had a 25 min phone interview, then a 1 hour interview at their office (on the landing at the top of the stairs). Then, I had a 20 min phone role play and another 30 min phone interview. I was really let down because they didn't seem to know if they were interviewing for a Customer Service Rep or a Team Leader. It felt like a guess, and I had no clue which role I'd end up with. I applied for customer service but got asked loads of team leader questions. They should be clearer. If someone applies for customer service, ask them customer service questions, not team leader ones? After all that, I talked to Brian (another team leader) and Josh (HR) about why they picked someone else. That's fine, they found a better fit. But THEN they asked me to come in for another interview for their supply 'team'. They didn't mention it was temporary, paid £8 an hour, and involved making purely outbound calls to get massage therapists on board. You can't seriously expect people to just show up hoping they'll take the job, right? Coming in for a second interview, which was held in a massage room, was a complete waste of time. Despite the lack of professionalism and organization, the people I met were nice.

The interview process involved a telephone interview, followed by a take-home technical project, and then a 3-hour onsite interview with several people. During the telephone interview, my salary expectations of £45k were discussed. However, at the onsite interview, an HR representative inquired about my salary expectations again, stating they couldn't offer that amount because "we're a startup" and I lacked sufficient in-office experience, even though I was already employed as a Full Stack Developer. I believe they should have been upfront about their offering range during the initial phone call.

I had an initial phone call. It was short. They talked about the company, its mission, and the role. They stressed that the person needs to be able to use Python and R for data manipulation, which wasn't in the job description, only that they should be good with Excel and large datasets. I'd tell people not to apply unless they know Python and R, and Urban Massage should be clearer about what skills are essential. Not much talk about actual performance marketing skills or experience.