VGS Interview Questions
& Process

So I had two rounds for the internship. The first one was with a senior dev and it was pretty chill, the coding part was easy and they were nice. The second round though, with the hiring manager, was kinda rough. It felt like they just wanted me to spill every single thing I did in my last internship, like day by day, week by week. Then they asked about the problems I ran into during all that time. That was it, just those two questions for the whole interview.

They scheduled me for a virtual onsite system design interview with two developers. The interviewers weren't very engaged or conversational, which made it uneventful. They asked me to design an image hosting service. We discussed scale and fault tolerance. About 10 minutes in, they brought up geographical distribution of data, which we hadn't covered as a requirement. It felt like the interviewers were looking for a specific answer instead of a discussion. After the interview, I was completely ghosted, not even receiving a rejection email. I emailed HR for an update, but got no response. Terrible way to treat candidates.

So, I went through 5 stages of interviews. First, a recruiter call to chat about why I'm looking for a new role, my team, and salary expectations, and we agreed on a salary range. Then, an interview with the team lead focused on soft skills like communication, handling disagreements, and past job challenges. It was a really relaxed chat. Next, a programming interview, which was pretty easy – a task to sort data from a file, and I could use Google to help. It was more about checking familiarity with the language and my approach to solving problems when I don't know something, like in real life. After that, a Linux/Networking/Clouds interview, which was a mix, but the questions were standard for SRE/DevOps/production roles, with a cool discussion on VPNs, wireguard, and IPSec. Finally, a system design interview. I got good feedback and was really considering joining, but then finance couldn't approve my salary as it was too high, which felt off since we discussed it early on. The interview process itself was great, I enjoyed talking to everyone, but there seems to be a communication gap between departments. So, I was disappointed finance blocked the offer. Overall, the tech side is highly recommended, but confirm salary expectations early to avoid wasting time.

I'm still in the middle of the interview process but wanted to share my experience so far, which has been really great. The Recruitment Coordinator first reached out to set up a screening call with the Sr. Global Recruiter. When I looked at the times she sent, they were all super early PST (midnight to 5 am) so I asked for clarification. She was based in Ireland and the recruiter in Amsterdam, but she quickly sent over times that worked for my timezone and we got the screening call set up. The screening call with the Sr. Global Recruiter went well in my opinion. She explained the People Partner role really well, asked good questions, and answered mine thoughtfully. She also outlined the rest of the interview process and said she wanted to move me to the next step: a video interview with the Director of People Operations. This was on a Thursday. By Friday morning, I got an email from the Recruitment Coordinator asking for my availability for the video interview with the Director. I replied right away, and the interview was scheduled for the next Monday. I had the interview with the Director on Monday and was asked a few questions about my background. I was expecting more of a standard interview with behavioral/situational questions, and wasn't ready to be given the floor to interview him so early on. I asked about 4 questions, and looking back, I could have asked more, but they had already answered many of my questions. It's a really unique interview style, maybe even progressive, and I think it could work well. However, I'd suggest giving candidates a heads-up that they might need to be ready to interview their future boss. After the interview, I sent a thank you note to the Director and asked the Sr. Global Recruiter to pass it along. Even though she's in a different time zone, she responded quickly to say she'd share it. I'm really impressed with how engaged and responsive the recruitment team has been. I'm not done with the process yet, but this has been a great experience. In a time when candidates often deal with multiple virtual interviews over long periods, sometimes with no communication, it's refreshing to see how considerate VGS' recruitment team has been in explaining steps, moving quickly, and staying responsive. I'll update again when I finish.