Vast Interview Questions
& Process

It took about two months from applying to hear from a recruiter, but they were able to speed things up once we connected. I did a recruiter screen and a hiring manager screen, then had my onsite interviews. The onsite involved a presentation and then six separate interviews, and I got the offer all within a single week. The recruiter was awesome, and the interviewers were really thorough, making it a good process overall.

The initial setup was good. Interview prep was just okay, but there were strange questions about how I would solely lead an entire effort without a team, which seemed odd given the industry typically values teamwork. The team members who interviewed me were great and gave good feedback, even guiding me towards the answers they were looking for. The interviews were scheduled for 3-4 hours but were cut short due to production issues. It seemed like everyone was very busy. I suspect if I had gotten the job, it would have involved a lot of independent problem-solving. The recruiter didn't follow up, and there was basically no communication about the rejection, which was disappointing as a nice email would have been appreciated. Oh well, moving on.

The entire interview process spanned around seven weeks. It began with a recruiter call, followed by a technical coding challenge that involved an easy problem. After that, I had an onsite interview which lasted about four and a half hours. This onsite included a one-hour presentation of my technical work, and then five one-on-one interviews back-to-back. The interviews themselves felt fast-paced and practical, and most of the interviewers were quite friendly. However, the onsite interviews felt too rushed, and the overall recruiting process took way too long. The interviews were only 20-30 minutes, which felt too short for the technical conversations and problems, making things feel chaotic. Each interviewer started late and ran over their time, which disrupted the schedule for the following interviews. I also had to wait for weeks for a formal offer and only got vague updates after sending multiple emails.

I started with a call to the recruiter, who's also on the founding team. Then I had a technical phone interview with the head of the department. After that, I got an invite for an onsite interview. The onsite included me giving a presentation and then several panel interviews with the team members. About a day later, the recruiter/founder called and said they were very impressed and were going to offer me the job, and I'd get the written offer in a few days. It took over two weeks to get the offer, and they just gave me vague updates about waiting for 'executive approval.' Finally, after about 3 weeks, they told me they offered the position to someone else. It felt like a dishonest, unethical, and unprofessional run-around. They should have just told me if they wanted to interview other candidates, not verbally offer me a job and then falsely claim a written offer was coming, probably to keep me from accepting another offer. I can't imagine how they manage their employees, so I'm glad I dodged that bullet.