5y
As always, we appreciate the feedback so thank you. This gives an opportunity for us to acknowledge your concerns in a way that gives prospective applicants reading this a balanced perspective.
Interview Process Stages
Our interview process does have 5 stages, as you described. Each stage has different goals for helping ensure someone will be a fit - both for the role they are applying for, and our team in general. We are seeking skilled people, but also looking for things like alignment with our culture, our values, and our ways of working.
Take Home Assessment
This is referring to what we call the Selection Test. We start from scratch to create a unique selection test for every different role here. This helps the hiring team make an objective assessment about the candidate’s ability to do well in the role and also for the candidate to assess if the assignment, which mimics work that would be expected of them if they were to join the team, is interesting and what they expected. We completely appreciate that this step can take time from the candidate; it takes a significant amount of time from our review team as well where the assignment is reviewed, scored against a rubric, feedback is documented by 2 separate reviewers, then debriefed on - but from other feedback, we believe the mutual effort to be worth it to determine whether or not the role will be a positive long term fit for both parties! That’s our ultimate goal.
Interview Process Time
You’re right that our process is thorough; this is for good reason and also why we list out all interview steps in our initial pre-screen invite. Our intention is to be thorough in our assessment so that we are confident you will be happy here and excel in your role. It would be unfair to you, and to ourselves to bring someone on the team and then determine a few weeks or months later that it won’t work out. Our goal is to make sure that as much as you’re a good fit for the company, the company is equally a good fit for you, which ultimately takes times.
Final Interview Experience
When we’re excited about a candidate (which is always the case when they are invited for a final round!) we do our best to slot them in as soon as possible. If the proposed time doesn’t work for the candidate, we’re happy to collaborate on a new agenda. We apologize if this process came off as anything other than being eager to meet with you.
In terms of levelling, each of our 5 levels is made up of defined skills matrices that highlight both technical and values skills and each level is associated with a set salary range based on market research. Interviewers at every stage go into the next conversation having read the feedback and levelling suggestion from the last round. When the final conversation touches on what level your skills align with on our matrices, this levelling suggestion would have come from the review of your technical work. With that being said, it’s never our intention to make an interview feel like an interrogation. We have passed on this feedback and have had a conversation around how to avoid emoting this sentiment in the future.
Overall, our offer will only ever be based on two things:
- a thorough and objective assessment of that person’s skill and aptitude based on our interviews and levelling guide, and
- the body of market research we use to set our salary bands.
Hopefully this was helpful in understanding the ‘why’ behind our process and thank you as always for your valuable feedback.
