Reflections on my recent interviewing round.

I recently went through a job search, and I thought it would be good to do a mini retrospective on the whole experience. Overall, it was a better candidate experience than the last time I interviewed so I want to believe that the industry is making progress.

I didn't receive offers from everywhere below, but I did have multiple offers to consider. This is my genuine impression of their interview processes. Some company names are omitted to prevent any pile-on behavior, but if you are actively interviewing and would like to privately know about those negative experiences, I'm happy to talk.

But let's start with the gems!

The Highlights:

Zapier 's interview experience was top notch. This was the only final round I did that was a result of a cold outreach to me, and with each passing interview, I wanted to work there just a little bit more. They were authentic, candid, and every single interviewer was someone who was genuinely engaged in the conversation. They were incredibly swift at responding to emails and getting conversations scheduled. I felt respected as a candidate, and I felt it was a fair two-way street in vetting each other.

honeycomb.io 's approach was very similar to Zapier. I really enjoyed the format of preparing a presentation on a technical project I had previously led and getting to engage with questions about it. The hiring manager could tell me about the role’s short and long term expectations, what it would be like working with them, and the challenges ahead. I walked away from each interview feeling energized rather than drained. Those are all positive signs for me as a candidate.

Sourcegraph 's job posting format is the strongest I've seen. (See this example ). If you're looking for a gold standard to write your job descriptions from, this is it. Everything was written in very clear expectations on what success in the role would look like, and by the end of the process, I had 0 questions on what I'd be getting myself into. I really appreciated the clarity and I was able to ask much better questions to the hiring manager and my interviewers as a result of having something so wonderfully specific. It was actually a huge factor in my motivation to apply.

Remitly also had me wanting to work for them a little bit more with each passing interview. I'd like to give them a shout-out for the best rejection, too. I was made aware when it was down to me and one other candidate. Remitly called me to let me know when they ultimately went with the other candidate, provided specific feedback to me about why, and asked if they could reach back out if a role that might be opening up in another part of the organization came to fruition. It was clear, kind, and respectful. I'd send candidates there in the future without a doubt.

The Lowlights:

"Not Technical Enough" remains lazy feedback for rejecting a candidate, and if your recruiters are sending that phrase to candidates, you need to coach them on how to do better there. I'm at the point in my career where I'm plenty comfortable in my technical skills, but there definitely was a time where those words would have made me question whether I belonged in the industry at all. I don't think I was sneaking around Google for nearly 8 years without being technical. Thankfully this only happened with a single company. If I was editing it, "your technical skills weren't a match for this role’s domain" would have been a better way to phrase what I think they were trying to say. Do you see how that's different from diminishing technical credibility more broadly?

WorkDay applications are still awful. Please stop. I don't want to structure my resume data for you when you have my resume and my LinkedIn. Its straight up hostile user experience is becoming a meme for a reason.

Most of my interview rounds had equitable gender representation, which I think is partially a bias of my network, but I like to hope it’s a sign of a broader trend in the industry. However, I still had some all male interview slates. I'm used to male-dominated environments and I even really enjoy breaking down the culture that usually contributes to that, but I was still shocked that two companies couldn't offer me a single woman to talk to that I'd be working with. That should really trigger some reflection from management, and it made me want to steer clear as a candidate, even when I liked the project and prospective reports.

What Could Have Gone Better:

System Design Interviews. Every kind of interview is going to have a spectrum of quality, but I still feel like as an industry we're awful at giving system design interviews. I used to have to administer them as a hiring manager at Google, and I wasn't ever really convinced that they were a reliable hiring signal, especially for anything below a senior role, because they tended to drift more towards the interviewer's expertise rather than what the role would be focusing on or the candidate's experience. I had a few fantastic System Design interviews that were genuinely fun with interviewers that could make it engaging and others that felt like the interviewer was there to go through some motions with me and was openly bored. The good ones were great and the bad were BAD. It felt like a waste of everyone's time and I'm skeptical it let either side figure out if the role was a good fit. If you’re going to make system design reviews a part of your process, invest in training your interviewers.

There are still companies who are requiring far too many interview rounds. You really should not need 8+ hours of a candidate’s time to make a decision. Candidates that are interviewing on top of their existing job are going to drop out of your pipeline fast this way. It also makes you slower, more difficult to schedule, and more likely to lose out on candidates that way. For the company I did tolerate this from, it was because I highly respected the engineering leader. At the very end of the process, I was rejected over a form email and told they didn’t give feedback. Harsh and cold after so much investment.

I received a referral to one company where the recruiter doing the hiring screen seemed annoyed that I had applied. We had a painfully tense first conversation and they never followed up. Ok then. If you're not happy someone applied, maybe don't do the hiring screen? It certainly seemed like a waste of both of our time. The recruiter is always the candidate's first impression of the process. I’ve worked with some phenomenal recruiters on both sides of the hiring decision, but this was hands-down the worst candidate experience I had. I was quite taken aback.

Err on the side of overcommunicating. I made it clear to one company that I was weighing other offers with deadlines, and that I was making a decision on a certain day. They had implied (but never outright stated) on a Tuesday that they'd likely be making an offer, but by Friday's decision day, I didn't hear from them until after 2pm, asking for my references that I had offered on Tuesday and only then would they make the verbal offer. As a candidate it felt like they were trying to run out the clock on my other options and weren't giving me time to fully evaluate their offer. I let them know that I had signed my offer an hour previously after radio silence on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning. Even a “no update” update would have been helpful, but ultimately it made me more confident in the decision that I did make. I was going to work with people who really wanted to work with me, too!

So that’s that. I learned a lot about myself, the industry landscape, and what I’d tweak about my own hiring manager practices as a result of this. If you want to chat with me about how to improve your hiring processes and candidate experiences, reach out to [email protected] to book time to chat.?