I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Biofidelity (Cambridge, England) in Apr 2024
Interview
Had the first screening interview online, the interviewer was visibly in a rush and started by talking about what the company does and by making several application questions. In this instance, I was not given the opportunity to ask any questions.
I had a second interview with two scientists where I was asked to prepare a 15 min presentation, better if related to the nature of the job and specific aspects of what the job would entail (?).
The scientists visibly lacked the interviewing experience (understandably) and were unable to properly answer the questions I had for them, which left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. This made me seriously question as to whether I wanted to move forward with the process or not.
At this point my application wasn’t successful. I didn't particularly appreciate the way the two interviews were handled and, in my case, failed to give me a good impression of the company culture.
On a positive note, some basic feedback was provided when asked.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Biofidelity in Apr 2024
Interview
The first stage was a very long HR screening interview. I found this unusual as the HR manager spent around 10 minutes explaining the science behind the company, but was just reading from the website uncomfortably which was a waste of time. However, he was friendly. There was a personality test as part of the first stage which was completely unnecessary in my opinion.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How would your friends describe you? How do you deal with conflict?
I applied online. I interviewed at Biofidelity (Cambridge, England) in May 2023
Interview
First stage: Video call with a member of HR team - this is more intense than typical screenings with interrogative personality tests. Second stage: Practical test/technical challenge - this was easy (or so I thought*), write a Python script to report on metadata and variants from a VCF. The expectations for a complete and scalable solution were unrealistic given as a practical test, good employees do not usually have time to provide a production ready complete solution. * apparently one of the variant related report suggestions were quite specific in reference to a particular cancer genomics paper that was not indicated. Third stage: Interview with panel of 2 Bioinformaticians and 1 wet-lab research scientist, and review of practical test/technical challenge. The interview itself should not have been difficult. The job description specified some key essential criterion and some desireable. The difficulty arose because I applied on the basis that I met all the essential criteria and more, but I lack experience in the desirable but not essential criteria. This is reflected on my CV, and I was honest that I had neither experience working with cancer data nor working experience with variant calling, simply that I had covered such topics during the gaining of qualifications and training. Unfortunately, I was unable to steer the interview in a more positive direction of everything I can do, the main focus was on what I couldn't do. This became very uncomfortable as they pushed hard for me to answer questions based on something I had already told them I was inexperienced in. It felt like an interrogation. I would have loved the opportunity to explain more about myself, more about what I can do for the company and the team rather than what I couldn't do. It was an unnecessarily uncomfortable experience.