I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Fonolo in May 2021
Interview
I was initially contacted by a recruiter, we had a 15-minute call to cover off a few basic questions. After that, I had an interview with Fonolo's HR. Lovely person, very friendly.
This interview was followed by a second interview with the head of marketing. Also seems like a really great person.
This interview was followed by a third interview, this time a "culture fit" interview with a random selection of other team members. Again, the interview itself was fine.
My issue with this interview process was not the people, the role, the compensation or anything like that - all that was great. My issue is how drawn out and protracted the interview process was. There was almost a week between each of these interviews, meaning the entire process took nearly a month. All the interviews were quite short, about half an hour each. The culture fit interview was effectively useless, "we like food and our pets," I mean, who doesn't? I feel like all you really learn from this sort of interview is whether people are capable of small talk. I think this whole process could have instead been a single hour-long interview, half an hour with HR, half an hour with marketing, kill the culture interview.
Somewhere in the process, I was also asked to do a personality quiz type thing as well as an "assessment exercise" or as we call it in graphic designer circles "getting asked to work for free." I don't believe they used this work for anything, but asking candidates to do stuff like this always feels a bit icky to me.
Eventually, I did receive an offer from Fonolo, several days after the last interview and a couple more phone calls with HR later. I was given 72 hours to make a decision, which I found amusing after they had taken nearly a month to make a decision on me. I ultimately chose not to take the position, and fortunately, the door had not shut on another offer I'd gotten (at this point about three weeks back). I didn't choose to not accept Fonolo specifically because of the interview process, I just felt more strongly about the other position I'd been offered.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Fonolo
Interview
My interview process with Andrea exceeded my expectations. From the first call, she was easy to speak with, empathetic, straight-forward, and clearly communicated all expectations for the role and the interview process.
I had a fairly long interview process (~7 interviews) because we changed gears mid-process to have me interview for a different role that was more aligned with what I was looking for/where my skillset could be more useful for the team.
I had a couple phone calls, a couple video calls with team members from Marketing initially, and then outside Marketing as well (Sales, VPs, exec). Some were culture fits, some were task-specific, with a couple projects in there to develop sales cadences as well. The most memorable interviews were the ones with the VP of Marketing brainstorming marketing ideas for the team. All interviews were more conversational than traditional question-after-question, which I thought was great.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
From what I remember -
How would you develop a sales cadence?
What's your experience with paid ads?
Best/worst performing campaign?
Ideas for growth based on my research of the company
I applied online. I interviewed at Fonolo (Toronto, ON) in Mar 2021
Interview
Direct Applications and then Interview with the HR director first. I did not move forward post that stage. I appreciated that when I followed up as to why I was not moving further in the process, she actually agreed to have a phone chat with me and walked me through why they ended up going with a different candidate.