Goodreads Interview Questions

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2+ weeks. I interviewed at Goodreads (San Francisco, CA) in October 2013.

Interview

The "best" (worst) part of the initial communication is that after exchanging emails with the recruiter and agreeing on the interview date, I wasn't sent the quite usual email of "our company is located at <address>, please sign the attached NNN ". You may think that was little but searching for the company address is not optimal, what if they *just* moved? Later on... I was actually asked for the signed NNN after I arrived at the reception on the day off. Great.
After the interview, possibly the same recruiter didn't send feedback. No email, nothing at all actually.

I had about four interviewers, with one of them very professional and likeable perhaps he was happy outside of work with his sporting endeavors (judging by the clothing). The others were just average. One was a bit edgy and surprising to ask me a question about coding in Ruby, where the job wasn't for that and I had explicitly stated I haven't done that. I thought I read his stuff well enough for never having touched that.
Other questions were: traversing through a matrix, arranging layouts on a mobile device screen and so on.

There was a phone screen + coding; additional exercise;; and then an on-site interview.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. The process took a week. I interviewed at Goodreads.

Interview

I was contacted by an HR person via email and a phone interview was scheduled. My interviewer was friendly. I coded over a Google doc with him. The interview went fine but I did not get a call back for an in person interview - I was slightly surprised by the result.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. The process took 1+ week. I interviewed at Goodreads (San Francisco, CA) in January 2017.

Interview

Recruiting was very professional. I applied online and they contacted me via email to schedule a phone screen with the hiring manager. The calendar confirmation contained some additional instructions:

"Please consider the following interview tips:
1. Be in a quiet place where you are comfortable and there are no distractions.
2. Have a copy of your resume available just in case you are questioned on it.
3. Have paper and pen ready to use.
4. Have any questions you have for the interviewer ready."

Based on the above, and the dozens of reviews on Glassdoor describing the toughness and rigor of the Amazon interviewing process, I prepared like crazy as I expected some tough questions.

The interviewer called on time, but after a couple minutes it became clear s/he had not prepared to conduct an interview. S/he had not read my resume and did not seem to have any questions to ask me other than "Tell me about yourself" as s/he skimmed my resume and occasionally murmured, "You have an interesting background". Once we got through my background, s/he did not have follow up questions for me. I filled in with questions of my own and asked about the company culture, team structure and next steps.

A couple days later, I noticed that they changed the job title (but not the job description), and a day after that recruiting contacted me to tell me they were moving forward with other candidates and that I should please understand they were unable to give me feedback on my interview.

Overall it was a very odd experience and I can only hope that this is not exemplary of the interview style at Goodreads.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through other source. The process took a week. I interviewed at Goodreads (San Francisco, CA) in February 2012.

Interview

Goodreads reached out to me for this position because of my high usage of their site. Written interview with hypothetical scenarios which I had to provide best answers to, followed by Skype interview with similar hypothetical questions.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied in-person. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Goodreads (San Francisco, CA) in September 2012.

Interview

I met M.E. at an event and we talked briefly. I think I contacted him by email and I ended up coming in for an interview. The receptionist was really nice, but on the whole the place was dim and dull and no one was really interacting with anyone else. They have this cute thing where each conference room is painted with a book theme, but I kid you not, the open office plan was like a weird dungeon - very gray and lifeless looking.

First I had a phone interview which was really just a lot of ruby/programming/MVC basics, not hard at all. Exchanged emails, then set up an in-person time.

I was interviewed by three people on my first day there. We did programming problems on a whiteboard, which I was decent at, and played a weird card game which I then had to write a program to simulate; I pair-programmed with the interviewer on this one.

I got called in again for another round of interviews about a week later, and same kinda routine - whiteboarding, chatting, one product guy even had me draw a bunch of UI scenarios on a whiteboard, which was a little strange but I went with it and talked everything out with him. I was interviewed by four people I believe this time. On my way out I ran into M.E. and tried to say hi and chat for a moment. He didn't make good eye contact which was slightly awkward, but I guess that's how some people are.

So all told, it was nearly ten interviews, and over two weeks total, and in the end, they simply didn't go with me. C'est la vie!

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. The process took a week. I interviewed at Goodreads (San Francisco, CA) in January 2015.

Interview

Goodreads was really helpful, meeting my schedule requirements so that, if I did not get a job with them, my other offers would not expire.

I communicated with my contact there through email and phone to set up interview times. I had one phone interview with the head of the department, and then a 3.5 hour interview with two people from the good reads team, and two from amazon music.

I did receive an email with the exact address and specific instructions for meeting the doorman and signing an NDA. The floorplan is an open office design.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Goodreads.

Interview

The process started when I applied online and my candidacy was forwarded to the recruiter by another recruiter (who had first reached out to me through someone I had worked with in my past experience). 8 interviews totally, starting with 2 phone screens, 4 in-person 1st round and 2 in-person second round. The recruiter typically came back with an update in 3-4 days but in some cases, there was a 1-2 week gap between the previous round and an update for the next round.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. The process took 2 days. I interviewed at Goodreads (San Francisco, CA) in April 2015.

Interview

The interview process was very quick ,got a call for a initial talk on what things I am currently working on.A technical interview was scheduled for the very next day. The technical interview was partly coding and theoretical.Questions were mostly focussed on memory management.The coding was more like given a scenario , what will be the access specifier for the properties of the class.
Was shown some code snippets and asked to find the issues in the code.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. The process took 2+ weeks. I interviewed at Goodreads in May 2015.

Interview

I went through a phone screening then two technical interviews and I'm all set for an onsite interview. I will update this as soon as I do the onsite interview.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. The process took 3 days. I interviewed at Goodreads in February 2016.

Interview

Got an email from HR requesting for a phone interview. Simple iOS related questions using GCD , frame vs bounds , runloop, atomic/nonatomic, retain cycle. Some behavioral questions and a simple coding/ design round.

As expected I got an email next day from HR mentioning that they couldn't find a strong fit.

Interview Questions