Zoosk Interview Questions
& Process

My initial conversation was with a Zoosk recruiter where I mentioned I wasn't actively seeking a new role but the interviews went well. Zoosk's culture and vision for the future of dating seemed promising. However, I had some strange interactions with the recruiter. After the interviews, I received a conditional offer via email. The next business day, the recruiter conducted her own interview with me, which was odd since I had already spoken with Zoosk staff. She then emailed to say I was getting a formal offer based on that call. This felt out of line and like the recruiter was overstepping. Even though I had initially told her it would take me six weeks to start searching and she agreed, I was told to decide in one week. Despite this change, which I somewhat understand for a startup, I accepted the timeframe because I was interested. To my surprise, she called a few days later demanding a decision 'that day,' giving me only 3 hours to decide! I declined the offer because of this unprofessionalism. The recruiter often didn't answer my questions and misrepresented information. When I got the offer, she called the number of options 'a lot' and misused terms like 'fair market value' and 'exercise price' when I asked about share value, making it confusing. She was also pushy, saying no negotiation was allowed on the compensation. The final incident was the last call where she demanded a decision 'today.' This aggressive request contradicted our prior agreement about my decision timeframe and the role's responsibilities. It's a shame because Zoosk is doing interesting work and should be careful about who represents them and how. My main concern was if this is how I'd be treated now, what would happen in six months?

So this job has been open for like eight weeks in SF, and I got hired by Google afterwards as an Application Architect, so keep that in mind. They either didn't remember I was interviewing for an architect role or just didn't know how to interview one. I wasn't asked anything about software architecture, like making diagrams, or verifying communication skills. They didn't ask about scaling databases, using caches, protocols, languages, or storage strategies. It was all programming trivia. The phone screen from my potential manager said they wouldn't want me writing math/algorithms, but instead evaluating frameworks. But then, after three hours of this trivia, they asked me to code a routine for a 2D matrix problem with five minutes left. I told them thanks, but they're looking for the wrong person. This role was supposed to be about moving Zoosk from LAMP to MEAN, but there was no discussion about Node.js internals, its async model, scaling, MongoDB issues like write locks or sharding, or load balancing. We also didn't talk about building real-time chat without polling or browser features for persistent connections. They didn't even look at my website or GitHub, which they were impressed with later. I just answered everything except the last coding question because I'd heard enough.

I applied for the Software Engineer role online. About a week later, the recruiting team reached out to schedule the first round, a phone screen. I did a lot of prep, but on the day of the interview, the interviewer seemed rushed and unprepared. They asked general questions about my past project experience. For the coding part, they gave a not-so-difficult exercise. I came up with an optimized solution, but the interviewer disagreed, which made me question their grasp of fundamental algorithms.

I had an easy home assignment focused on an Instagram campaign and a newsletter. I spoke with the Head of Design, who asked me about my design decisions and questioned some of them. It seemed she was expecting me to defend my ideas, but I ended up agreeing with her instead. I realize now that I should have shown more personality and determination in my responses.