Walnut Interview Questions
& Process

I only had one call with the organization. The call was short, with only 3 questions asked. It was insisted that video be turned on during the call and that we couldn't to proceed without it, despite the fact it was conducted at 5:30 am PST due to their availability. I shared my experience and thoughts on the first two questions. I wasn't ready to share a pay amount yet, so I asked for their pay range. They were unwilling to share their pay range for the role and asked that I follow up instead with a pay expectation after doing market research. At that point it seemed like a foregone conclusion that we wouldn't proceed with the process due to the pay question. Overall the organization seemed inexperienced with hiring senior leadership. They were not ready to share any information about the company's growth and expectations, revenue or composition and also insisted on pay information from the candidate without being willing to share their own range. They claim to be a remote first company, but seem oddly unwilling to accommodate for very common situations that occur when you're working from home that might require your camera to be off. Unusual and discouraging experience for a senior leadership interview. As expected, they did not proceed with the process past that point.

I was first reached out by an external recruiter. After that initial chat, the rest of the interview process involved: (1) a 30-minute product sense interview with a PM lead; (2) a 2-hour deep dive into my past product experience with the head of product and another PM lead; (3) around 30 minutes of behavioral interviews with several team members; and (4) reference checks with my former managers. Overall, I had a great impression of everyone I met and really appreciated that the process focused on my actual prior work as a PM, instead of hypothetical scenarios. All conversations felt really collaborative and natural. I was super happy to get an offer from Walnut and am excited to join the team.

It was a bit of a wild ride. Started with a cold call, then a Zoom, and then a home assignment. I put two days into that assignment. Submitted it, and scheduled a meeting to go over it, but literally no one showed up. I was just sitting there on Zoom alone. Reached out to HR, and they had no clue what was going on. The next day, the same HR person called asking how the meeting went, and then just dropped that they weren't moving forward with my application. Got a generic email saying thanks for the time, felt like they didn't even look at my work. Super disrespected and felt totally used.

The interview process included a recruiter interview, a professional interview, a home assignment with a review, and a CEO interview. Even though I knew other candidates were also interviewing, the recruiter made me feel like I was the only one. She was quick to follow up after each interview and treated me really well, like a person and just another candidate. It was a very humane experience overall, which I really appreciated.