Victorious Interview Questions
& Process

The first round was with talent acquisition and it was nice. I was given a take-home assignment that took me five hours to complete. I confirmed what they wanted, researched competitors, and created the content they asked for. There was something odd in the assignment where it seemed they wanted one thing but my instinct was to do another, but I did what I thought they wanted. A few days later, after they reviewed my assignment, I was removed from consideration. I asked for feedback, which should be easy to get since the company seeks people who care about their work. If you're contacted to interview for this role, review the Victorious blog before completing the assignment. Specifically, read "How To Build a Keyword Theme Around a Primary Keyword." I suspect this is where I failed. (I'll never know for sure without that feedback, but I'm guessing.) My instinct was to do this very thing, but the way it's phrased in the assignment led me to go against my instinct. I feel that the instructions could be a bit clearer and link to references like this so prospective employees are set up for success. The rejection email was nice, as far as rejections go. It still stung after the time invested.

I had a good chat with the Senior Talent Partner, which lasted about 45 minutes to an hour. After that, they sent me a take-home assignment. The task was to create a plan for transferring internal domains, which is something I've done for big companies and presented to their C-suites. I spent a lot of time on it and submitted it. A week later, I got a rejection saying I missed something the prompt didn't explicitly ask for. I felt that if they wanted specific details, they should have asked for them in the prompt. It's a lot to ask someone to spend hours on an assignment just for a chance at an interview, so the requirements should be super clear.

This was an unbelievably inconsiderate interview process. They had me do an unpaid design test which involved creating an entire interactive PDF ebook. I had to study and constantly refer to their detailed graphic standards manual, download their specific fonts, colors, logos, and vector icons from various places, and find images from stock photo sites. After laying out all 10 pages, I had to watch tutorials to learn how to make clickable PDF checkboxes and interactive buttons, and then link everything to a bunch of different sources. I was given 4 days, and it ended up taking me 30 hours, with me still tweaking it until 10 pm the night before the deadline. That's 30 hours I could have been applying for other jobs; I essentially gave up a whole week of job searching because I thought they were serious. After I submitted it, I got an email the next day thanking me for my hard work and asking if I was free for a call the following afternoon, with a 'party' emoji. I assumed it was an offer, because who would schedule a call, make someone wait another 24 hours after all that work, and then use a party emoji to say they didn't get the job? That would be messed up. But guess what? When it was time for the call, my phone never rang. I waited 10 minutes, then 15 minutes. No call. I called the number from my last interview and left a voicemail. A few minutes later, the person called me back and said that 'he' had already offered the position to an in-house freelancer they'd worked with for a long time, and that there were also several referrals ahead of me anyway. Why would you make me waste my time like that? I figured the point of a test like that is to see if the designer can design within the brand voice and follow instructions. Couldn't that be done with just one page, something that takes a few hours? Is there any valid reason to ask any candidate to spend a whole week on this, especially if there are other candidates already in line? The more I think about it, the angrier I get. I've been in this field for 16 years and never heard of anything like this. It's the rudest, most unprofessional thing I've ever experienced. Do not waste any time with this company.

The interview process was pretty standard, but thorough. I applied on their website and heard back from a recruiter the very next day. Then I had two phone screens, each about 30 minutes long. After those, I had a longer interview with four people, which took about 2.5 to 3 hours. During the interviews, I got a really good sense of their company culture and how much they value it. They made sure I'd be a good fit with their values, and honestly, I've never felt more welcomed in an interview. The questions were a mix of typical interview questions and some about me personally, which was nice. I'm really excited about the possibility of growing with this company!