Seattle City Light Interview Questions & Reviews

Interviewed Jul 2010 (took 1 week)

The entire process took 7 days. Their interview invitation came on Friday, the interview/skills test on the following Tuesday, the offer on Wednesday, my deliberation/further questions on Thursday, and then declining the offer on Friday.

My initial communication with the company was an email from a coordinator with an invitation to interview the next Tuesday. I had not communicated with them before, so I guess they got my resume off of the Internet. Initially they did not send me a job description, but rather a job title only, so I asked for the description before agreeing to interview. For that reason, I'd rate the coordination/organizing of the interview as fair to poor.

The interview consisted of two parts: a programming skills test(generic SQL) and a group/panel interview.

The skills test consisted of 2 problems, with a time limit of 30 minutes to complete the test. I was taken to a conference room and left alone to take the test. I was given the test, blank paper and was offered water/coffee.

The interviewers were professional, concise, courteous, punctual and personable. Clothing was business casual, although I of course wore a suit and tie. There were 4 interviewers total, 3 men and 1 woman. I think the breakdown was 1 manager, 2 functionals and 1 developer(the coordinator was not present for the group interview). The developer's accent(South Asian) was a little difficult to understand, but he was not annoyed/offended when I asked him to repeat anything. All the others seemed to be American based on their accents.

During the group/panel interview, there was one lead interviewer(the manager for the new position) who started off describing the organization and the main project they were working on, which involved the conversion/consolidation of 10+ databases of various types(Oracle, text, Access, etc) into Oracle. There were 5 main interview questions, and these were printed out for me. Each of the interviewers asked a question, I answered, then anyone could ask follow-ups. One of the questions was a puzzle/brain-teaser. For the last part I was asked by the developer/programmer to explain and defend my answers from the skills test. The developer was somewhat aggressive in his questioning, I believe he was trying to see if I would start to doubt my solutions and how I would react under criticism/pressure. Upon review of my answers, I was firm in stating that they were correct, while acknowledging that there were of course several other methods to achieve the desired results.

Overall, I think Seattle City Light is probably a good employer to work for. They seemed organized, professional, intelligent, laid-back and personable. I would have had no problems working with any of the interviewers. The offices were clean, neat, modern and in a great high-rise location downtown near mass transit lines.

As far as advice, for developers/programmers/analysts, I would recommend that you be prepared for skills tests(SQL or whatever the position calls for), puzzles/brain-teasers, and to be grilled on your related knowledge and answers. Be assertive, defend your answers(if they warrant it), be descriptive/concise in your answers, and be enthusiastic/personable/polite.