Velodyne Lidar Interview Questions
& Process

I got an email from HR, which led to a phone interview with the head of electrical engineering. He called 30 minutes late and immediately said, "this won't take that long." He didn't seem to have my resume and made me repeat all my experience. He only asked technical questions and seemed uninterested in anything else. He mentioned they usually hire people with 8-10 years of experience for this role, which made me wonder why we were even talking. Neither the interviewer nor HR replied to my follow-up emails, and I never heard back. It felt like a complete waste of time.

This review is from a few months ago. The process involved a phone interview and then in-person interviews. I decided not to proceed with the in-person interviews because of a few things: 1) there was a lot of turnover in the department I would have worked in, and also at the company overall, 2) they wanted to rush the interviews with very little notice and weren't flexible with my schedule, 3) they scheduled multiple interviews that could have been several hours long, and 4) the Glassdoor reviews. In today's job market, where candidates can get multiple offers, employers really need to be considerate and respectful of a candidate's time, especially if they're currently employed. Trying to hurry them into an interview makes the employer seem impatient and inconsiderate, which isn't a good look for the company. If an employer is in a rush to interview, I'd suggest they explain it's because they don't want to risk losing the candidate, assuming that's the real reason. NOTE: The Glassdoor options for 'Did you get an offer?' don't fit my situation because I declined the in-person interviews, and there should be an option for that.

A recruiter reached out to me first. Then, I was invited onsite for a technical interview that had 3 rounds. The questions weren't too difficult, mostly focusing on 5S and how to use it. The followup was really unprofessional though. It's been 2 months since my onsite interview and I still haven't heard back. I waited a couple of weeks and then emailed them, but no response. I even tried calling the recruiter without any luck. I've been interviewing with other companies a lot lately, and Velodyne Lidar has been the worst and most unprofessional experience.

After the first couple of phone interviews, which I thought were pretty average, they moved on to the on-site interviews. These interviews took up a little more than half a day. The technical questions were relevant and not too hard, and the overall vibe of the interview was positive. I got a good impression that these folks know their stuff, would be easy to get along with, and would be fun to work with. They were totally inflexible about scheduling, though.