The hiring process at Champlain Investment Partners takes an average of 7 days when considering 2 user submitted interviews across all job titles. To compare, the average duration of hiring at similar companies like BlackRock, Inc. is 14 days, Fabricated Software, Inc. is 2 days, and Apple Inc. is 21 days. Candidates applying for Software Engineering Lead had the quickest hiring process (on average 7 days), whereas Software Engineering Lead roles had the slowest hiring process (on average 7 days).
The process was slow, but the entire team was super friendly and knowledgeable. Unfortunately, I did not get the position, but this place seems like a wonderful place to work.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
If you could fly anywhere in the world, where would you go?
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Champlain Investment Partners (Burlington, VT) in Jan 2022
Interview
This was an interesting one. I wasn't actively looking for a new position, but a recruiter approached me with what sounded like a really good opportunity. From his description I sounded like an exceptionally good fit, although reading over the official job description I did not.
They were looking for X, Y and Z. I had extensive experience in X, but no experience in Y or Z. But the recruiter called me up and assured me that the company was being realistic and did not expect to find a candidate with X, Y and Z, and what they really wanted was someone with X who could learn Y and Z. So I took the interview.
Which turned into roughly an hour and fifteen minutes of me telling them "Yes, I've been doing X for the last 20 years, I am a ninja level black-belt in X, mentor people in it and have training videos posted on X online", "No, I have no experience with Y. It's pretty new and I haven't had a job where I've worked with it yet", "No, I have no experience with Z, in fact I can't think of a single developer with extensive experience with X who also has experience with Z"
It was impossible to tell from their expressions how I was doing, since one of them smiled at pretty much everything and one of them frowned at everything.
Aside from the technical questions which I could either answer extremely well or not at all there were a number of "What would you say is your worst quality as a developer?" style questions which I had thought interviewers were smart enough to stop asking, since they encourage deception. "Sometimes I devote too much of myself to my job..."
I sent a follow up email to the interviewers immediately after the interview, received a neutral response, and the next week I received a call from the recruiter telling me that the company really wanted someone with more experience in Y and Z. Still not sure if the recruiter oversold my qualifications, or if the company decided after the interview that Y and Z were essential.
Overall I don't think the interview process or questions were unfair, but considering there was no path to being offered the position it was ~2 hours of my life I'm not getting back between the interview itself and talking to the recruiter.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What is one thing you've been criticized on in a past position and how did you work to improve it?