My review will be longer, but ~well~ worth the read if you're a serious, qualified candidate: 1. I received an invitation to a phone screening that was conducted by a recruiter. She was professional and successfully accomplished the goals of the screening. She was great! 2. I was invited to take a technical assessment that involved completing 3 modules from an online Stanford computer science course. The assessment involved answering several recollection questions as well as checking simple code for errors or answering what the string would return if run (e.g. "Here's a table of data and a string of code using the print command. If this script were run, what would the result be?" You then check for errors or select the names that would be returned if no errors are present). It was around 30 questions, and harder than I expected (but not terribly challenging for most STEM or business grads). I was informed later that an 80% was required to pass. I really liked this approach to technical assessments, as opposed to giving an IQ test that pretends its not an IQ test for legal reasons (looking at you, Wonderlic test). I was impressed by this step as well! 3. I was then invited to schedule a video interview with a manager who oversaw one of the teams that I was interviewing for. He was 15 minutes late to the video interview and had not bothered to look over my resume prior to the call (I resisted the urge to invite him to reschedule for after he'd had time to prepare). His social interactions seemed feigned, and he only came across as genuine one time that I recall. He seemed to stick to a predetermined script rather than conducting a real interview. I'm not sure if he was having a bad day or was simply inexperienced at interviewing. I certainly understand both happen, but he did a poor job of both asking questions and assessing responses. I've included descriptions of these interactions with the questions themselves, listed below. He explained his goal was threefold: Determine how I approach problem solving, observe my ability to explain technical concepts, and establish a history of past success. He failed the first and the third. The video interview dissuaded me from pursuing them as an employer, and even if I hadn't already received another offer I would have considered turning them down. **REMEMBER (or realize) that you're interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you. If you're getting to the interview process with Qualtrics then you're clearly a highly qualified candidate that many employers would love to have. Don't limit yourself because you feel the need to accept the first offer that comes your way.** Some time ago I watched a lecture talking about our current education system, applicable to this experience. I'll paraphrase a summary: "Our educations system teaches you that when you're given a problem to solve, there's one correct answer to this problem, and that answer is located in the back of the book-- but don't look it up, that's cheating! Real-world career work is the opposite of that. There's rarely one answer to a problem, and if you can look the answer up, you do! It would be a poor use of time to solve a problem that already has been answered. In this way our education process does a poor job training people for real careers." This interview really backed up that analysis. If you're an experienced professional, approach your application here with caution. They clearly prioritize scholastic accomplishments, research paper publication, standardized test scores, etc. as more valuable than experience and the value you've added to your past companies. It was very clear this team "leader" was more concerned with checking boxes and filling company-given requirements rather than conducting a real interview. His approach to the first and third questions illustrate this (details found below in the answers portions of the Q&A). While I do think there's a lot of opportunity for qualified "just graduated" applicants to get experience (its a good name to put on your resume) before moving on to another more innovation-appreciating employer, it seems the value just isn't there for candidates who are already accomplished and are interested in further innovation and problem solving. Unfortunately it looks like they've grown past the ingenuity-employee phase and entered the follower-employee phase. I'm interested in innovating and problem solving, not script following. In my estimation they'll continue to qualify script-followers if they continue to handle their interviews like this.

First, a screening call with an opportunity to ask questions and verify that you understand the job requirements loosely. Then, A series of Zoom Interviews with various members from different teams.