Plaxo Interview Questions & Reviews

Interview Details – I first met with a recruiter at a career fair at my university. I gave him a resume and we were in touch by email later that day. 2 Days later I went through two phone screens, one with a non-technical representative, and the second with 2 guys from the engineering team. I was told that I would be asked to come down to the office in Mountain View for a full 4 hours in-person interview, but instead was extended an offer by email later that same day.

Interview Details – I was contacted by an external recruiter about this position. After speaking on the phone with her for 20 minutes, she invited me to a phone screen with the hiring manager, who is a Senior Director with Comcast (which owns Plaxo).

The hiring manager interviewed me for 30 minutes about my background and my vision for the responsibilities of the position, focusing mostly on strategic thinking. She indicated she would invite me for an in-person round of interviews at Plaxo HQ in Mountain View.

In Mountain View, I met with five people over three hours. It was a little disorganized, as the recruiter did not send me an interview roster ahead of time, and people had traded times anyway. Additionally, there was no real point of contact there, so I had to figure out to whom to give my paperwork and where to go when I arrived.

I met with a broad range of partners for the position, including the VP Engineering, VP Marketing, VP Strategy, User Experience, and another Product Manager. Each interview focused on behavioral and case interview techniques, although it was clear that most of the interviewers had not read my resume before they met me. The interviews were generally challenging, but not the most grueling I'd done.

Interview Details – Initial phone screen followed by a half-day series of 1x1 interviews. After the 1x1 interviews, there was a half-day "skills" test which presented 5 standard operational issues to solve. These mostly involved network configuration (dns, iptables), shell scripting, and log processing. You should be comfortable in shell scripting as well as regex in a language of your choice (perl, python, etc.).

Reason for Declining – Had a better offer from another company.

Interview Details – Initial phone screen with recruiter was followed by a phone screen with the hiring manager. Very standard questions for this step. Given homework assignment to prep with about a week's lead time -- evaluate current product with certain goals in mind and develop recommendations for changes / new features. Prepare 10-12 slide presentation (~45 minutes) to bring in. Pitch your ideas to a room of about 10 people, including dev, qa, design and other PMs.

They then pick one of your ideas for a simulation, where you work with 3-4 team members to flesh out one of your suggested concepts. Focus on "how do you think through product design". After ~1hr, you present back to the larger group your team's suggestions. This is followed by 4-5 1:1s with cross functional team members. Some scenario-type questions ("how would you figure out priority on X?").

About a week later came back for second rounds. In depth conversations with hiring manager, CEO and 2 other product folks. Made offer that same day.

Interview Details – First phase consisted of a phone interview which was a smattering of LAMP based questions. Made it through that and was quickly invited for an on-site interview. Was told to prepare for a "simple" three hour C++ interview that would have a small PHP part to it. So .... for a PHP based position this is obviously a red flag. Why a C++ based interview .... for 3 hours ..... that is "simple" in their words. Gambled and completely prepared for a PHP based skill test and ... I was right; not a hint of C++ anywhere in the MVC based web app challenge. And that is all I will say about the content of the coding test. Was warned that candidates don't finish the entire test. I got through most of it, but was not invited to meet more people after the 3 hours.

The level of difficulty here is high, not so much in the overall challenge, but in the requested complexity in just 3 hours. If you don't complete nearly all of it, don't expect to "advance." Plus, coding in the middle of a noisy open space floor; had to deal with a group of employees having a fervent discussion at the desk I was sharing with them for quite a while. I'm not the only reviewer to mention this. Hardly professional of a company to put candidates through this. Also of note is that I met no manager/tech lead level people during my 3+ hours on-site. I met three people, two of them engineers. Meeting managers should be a given for an on-site, especially of one over 3+ hours Would not have accepted an offer here even if it had happened.

Interview Details – It was a job simulation.
Very hard to concentrate in open-space environment.
I would not accept this offer anyway...