Recruiter contacted me after seeing my LinkedIn profile. Before talking to them, I asked a colleague who works for them to know what to expect. Riot is a big proponent of "Agile Methodology", stakeholder management, self-awareness, and definitely helps to "drink the Kool Aid" due to their "player experience is first" mantra. My contact put in a good word to the HR. When I talked to the Senior Recruiter (via Skype), he gave me a walk-through of what Riot is all about and what the position entails. The description of the position is quite vague since they want the candidates to be well-rounded. From my understanding, if you don't like working with the Development team, you can ask to be move to Publishing (assuming that there's an opening). He asked me the typical HR-related questions (company knowledge, salary expectations), but he wanted to know more how much of a gamer I am. 2 weeks after, the next step was to talk to the hiring managers (project leads). The first one (via phone), I believe she worked for marketing since she asked how I've worked with Creative and Brand teams. I mentioned to her that I've worked with Publishing team and have background on both print and digital campaigns as I was guiding her to my online portfolio. Another 2 weeks after, they wanted a second interview (via Skype). This one was a little difficult because I was currently vacationing in Spain. I didn't want to postpone the meeting and was really excited for the opportunity, so I decided to go for it. A lot of things worked against me: time difference (I was 9 hours ahead of them) and technical issues (the place I was staying didn't have great WiFi). He asked my experience with Agile and how I've implemented it in places I've worked at. I followed up with the Recruiter a month after talking to the hiring managers. Unfortunately, the job requisition got put on hold due to internal management shift.

Every part of the Riot Games interview process feels like they interview hundreds of candidates to appear to be selective. It's pretty clear this process is putting a strain on their own employees and seems that it would be pretty indicative of systemic problems throughout the organization. Let's start with the job descriptions that are left intentionally vague, without even a basic inclination of work/project area. Let's follow that up with absolutely nothing for experience requirements to have a baseline of their expectations. Now we'll move on to scheduling: It's done by a bot (why!?!?) of my three interviews, they were rescheduled 8 times, 3 of which with <24hrs notice. Half of the interviews had the interviewers switched last minute due to availability. This leads me to believe that the bot simply looks for open calendar space and assigns the interview in round robin fashion, thus giving the interviewers minimal time if any, to review candidate backgrounds. The interviews: My interviews generally consisted of an agenda that was never followed. My interviewers all showed up fairly late due to "this interview being tacked onto their schedule last minute" and they were attempting to multitask during the interview. This became a little bit more frustrating when interviewers were actively texting on their phones on the video interview. Expect to be asked a ton of hypothetical questions while still having no understanding of what area of the company you'd potentially be working in or what you would be working on. You should also expect to be familiar with the 'Riot Manfiesto' even though in my particular case no HR people ever mentioned it's existence to me. After your investment of ten or so hours you can expect to receive a generic rejection via a 'no reply' email. When your employees actively boast that they interview 200 candidates to hire one, it seems a bit in poor taste to provide absolutely zero feedback. Beyond that, I've interviewed at many places and I'd have to say Riot's process is one of the worst, both for their own interviewers and for the interviewees as it seems to put an necessary strain on both. I'm solely providing feedback in hopes that they are able to inspect it a bit and look for some improvements.