Code for America interview questions

The interview process began with a recruiter phone screen, followed by multiple essays and an interview with the hiring manager. One essay in particular made me uneasy, as it required creating a detailed, step-by-step execution plan for a problem the company is actively trying to solve. It felt like a way to get free consulting work under the guise of an interview task. The overall process was extremely long and demanding: a screening, an unpaid assignment, a hiring manager interview, multiple back-to-back panel interviews, a whiteboarding exercise and a portfolio review, then finally, a conversation with the CEO. While the pay offered was reasonable for a nonprofit, the process didn’t feel equitable. A candidate with caregiving responsibilities or limited time would struggle far more than someone with fewer constraints. For an organization that emphasizes fairness and equity, the process itself creates barriers that undermine those values. Please do better.

I was asked to complete a task without any previous conversations or 1:1 interviews. The task seemed out of the scope of the advertised job position, which raised a red flag immediately. Once I submitted the answer to the task, I received an automated message that I was rejected. The email came from no reply address so I could not reach back and ask for feedback.