Vial Interview Questions
& Process

This was by far the most disorganized and unprofessional the interview process I’ve ever had. I applied in March and did not receive an HR screen call or interview, but instead received a link to book a 15 min call. They were extremely confused and didn’t know why I didn’t speak with HR first, but proceeded with an interview. Things seemed to have gone really well, and the team member assured me I would hear from the team about next steps the next week, and even outlined that there were three more interviews to follow. After that, I was completely ghosted by the team and sent multiple follow up emails to which I received no reply whatsoever. This was the most unprofessional process I’ve ever undergone for a job position. I hope you take this into consideration given many of the same experience as mine across Glassdoor.

So first there was a call with the recruiter where they asked me to tell them about myself and why I wanted to work for Vial. Then I had a 45-minute interview with the dev team where they asked me some basic React, SQL, and TypeScript questions, nothing too technical. After that, there was a take-home assignment which was supposed to be a 2-hour calculator challenge but ended up being about 20 hours because it required building authentication and history persistence, and also deploying it. Lastly, I had a 20-minute chat with the VP of Engineering to check for communication skills and culture fit.

Vial's CEO reached out to me on LinkedIn about a role in their new BatteryBio unit. After a good initial screening call, I had five 1-on-1 discovery calls with different team members in a single week. It seemed like the business unit was new and had some big gaps in expertise. They were more focused on my skills than on a specific role. The interactions were positive and transparent, but then things took a strange turn. A follow-up call with the CEO was suddenly canceled, with the reason being a move towards a 'highly specific role.' This felt odd given I'd been asking about the role and expertise needs multiple times. When I brought this up, the CEO then asked me to write a job description for a role I wanted, which made the whole thing confusing instead of just disappointing. It was a big time commitment, so I'd advise future candidates to make sure they get clarity on the role and expectations early on.

The interview process was pretty standard. It started with an initial recruiter call. Then there was a 30m chat with the hiring manager, which was more cultural and less technical, but I got great insight into the mission and growth of the company, and they answered all my questions. After that, there was a panel with 3 employees where they did a deeper dive into technical questions. This was followed by a take-home case study, which was pretty standard, presenting a primary scenario with a few supplementary questions. The final interview was with the CEO, where I had to present/review the case study and have a cultural fit conversation.