Consilience Software Interview Questions & Reviews

Interviewed Oct 2009 in Austin, TX (took 5 days)

I first had a phone interview with one of the Managers in Boston, MA which went extremely well. The interview had some basic technical questions in Java and centered around my experience and work ethics/philosophy. This led to being invited to an in-person interview at the Austin, TX offices. I showed up dressed to impressed in my best suit and tie and was led to a conference room to wait. Two of Consilience's engineers then walked into the room, the first one was dressed business casual and very friendly. The second interviewer actually took a pause in the door to look at me head to toe, he was wearing shorts and a dirty t-shirt. I am all for a relaxed work environment and I dressed to impress because it's what you do at an interview, especially one for a consultant position working with government organisations. The whole interview lasted about an hours and fifteen minutes, all technical. During that time, I was never able to establish rapport with the ill-dressed interviewer, in contrast, I had great rapport with the first one.

I was given several Java problems to code on the white board. What was unsettling is I was asked to give simple solutions to problems and later, once the solution was on the board my interviewers criticized that they would not be efficient given extremely large data sets. Had I been told that ahead of time, my solution would have been different. I was also asked database related questions which were formulated in order to avoid the use of DB keywords (how to ensure integrity of a database) and made them extremely confusing, launching me on a complex explanation about normalization. In retrospect I realize that the person asking that question was looking for me to answer "Make a certain column "REQUIRED"" but they had gone to such great length to avoid using the word "required" that the question made no sense. also, had they had any understanding of DB normalization, they would have understood the situation, alas they did not.

I felt like I had done well despite the unsettling nature of the code tests but was obviously not retained. I later learned from my recruiter that I was the 30th candidate that the company had interviewed and they had only retained one before me. All in all this experience has left quite a bad taste in my mouth, one that will last. I am highly unlikely to refer anyone to them.