Hulu Interview Questions

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2+ months. I interviewed at Hulu (Santa Monica, CA) in September 2016.

Interview

Small things make a huge impression. Having my name on the board welcoming me to the interview was one of those small things. Having multiple waters and snacks on the table also was helpful in easing in to the interview process. I felt wanted as opposed to just another candidate.

The interview process gave great insight in to some of the challenges the team was facing and I was more than prepared for the interview simply from previous experience. The questions were about creating and following processes from a management standpoint but also as an individual contributor and for someone who hadn't done both the questions would have revealed shortcomings rather quickly.

I had 3 phone screenings and then a panel interview onsite. The interview process was scheduled for an entire day and required a day off from my previous job. The interviews took all of that time.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. I interviewed at Hulu (Santa Monica, CA) in September 2017.

Interview

Interview process was like any other interview at a tech company. Super friendly call from HR, then a phone screening with a hiring manager. A week later they flew me out to Santa Monica for an onsite interview, around 8 interviews back to back. Questions were pretty behavioral, mainly talked about experience and why you fit in at Hulu. Everyone I met was friendly, but everyone was a caucasian employee, all from the same clique and all kind of look like your typical West LA bro.

Granted, the interview was friendly. Very simple questions you would NEVER use on the job so brush up on your fundamentals. The worst thing is after spending all this time to interview, they never called to follow up and tell me I didn't get the position, even after a follow up email. Definitely not respectful of your time, especially when you need to take a day off from your regular day job.

Interview Questions

Interview

I had a telephone interview regarding the test concepts and the test processes. The interview went for about an hour. After 4 days I got a email from Recruiter for the onsite interview. I had an interview in Seattle, the interview took more than 6 hours, the longest interview I have ever attended.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. I interviewed at Hulu (Santa Monica, CA) in August 2017.

Interview

Awful. Failed the first phone/screen interview. One question, pass/fail. It was the "Ransom note" question and I got the "good" answer, and with prompting got the ideal answer. Apparently that wasn't enough. After two days I received a form mail from the recruiter (see below).

Honestly this experience made me not only not want to work at Hulu, it makes me want to find another line of work altogether. There are 1.4 million google results on this question, dating to 2009. I spent a lot of time preparing by studying algorithms and computer science principles. I spend a lot of my own time doing an open source project. I have almost 20 years experience as an engineer.

None of that matters. I should've memorized one of those "interview questions" books or, failing that, googled the question and typed in the answer while pretending to think about it. I like software engineering because I get to be creative and solve problems. This kind of interview process is so intellectually empty it makes me think less of the entire profession. I did want the job, but I already have a job and I'm sure I'll find another. It's more about wanting to have a grown-up, intelligent conversation with a peer, and instead being thrown into a degrading pass/fail test they copy/pasted from the internet. Admittedly I am bitter, but it's a strange feeling to have a such a long career, work so hard, and have it boiled down to whether I happened to have memorized the ideal solution to a cliched interview question.

I realize this a trend, and tech is nothing if not blindly trend-driven, so I'm sure more interviews will be like this in the future. They had zero interest in my skills, my experience, or my ability to write code or work as engineer. They made no attempt to evaluate any of these. The interviewer did not seem to have seen my resume. Again, I am bitter, but this is, factually, an utterly worthless way to evaluate employees. They're testing nothing but rote memorization.

Even worse, after I had finished the problem, I had to go through the farce of "So do you have any more questions?" I'd rather they just disconnect the call as soon as they decide I've failed. The whole thing could be automated. Obviously they won't do that because they want to make a pretense of actually considering candidates in a sensible, humane way.

This is why, if you work in tech, you work with so many bad engineers. I interview people sometimes, and I can get a feel for who they are and their ability without even asking them to write code, just by talking to them about their experience and past projects. The purpose of an initial screening like this (if any), should be to weed out those who are totally unqualified, ie not even able to have an intelligent conversation about the role, or solve problems when prompted. The way this was done is almost certainly no more effective a way of finding the best candidates than flipping a coin.

============================

Hi {{myname}},

Thanks for interviewing with {{interviewer_name}} this week. He was was really impressed with your {{job_type}} experience and skillset, but ultimately we have decided to move forward with another candidate. We really appreciate that you took the time to consider us. I know there are a lot of companies out there that are hiring and your time is precious! I hope you know that we genuinely enjoyed talking with you you and we’d love to stay in touch, and we’ll definitely reach out to you if there’s a role that opens up that’s a better fit.

Best,
{{recruiter name}}

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. I interviewed at Hulu.

Interview

I had a phone interview & was asked to come in for an onsite. I arrived & waited an entire hour before the person who invited me in knowledged me. She said she didn't know I was there and the person who I was supposed to interview with was no longer available. She said she would call me later to reschedule. I never heard back. As a recruiter, I found this to be a horrible candidate experience and terribly unprofessional. If this is representative of how employees are treated or company culture, I can't recommend applying.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. I interviewed at Hulu.

Interview

After applying online, I spoke with a recruiter, then had a call with a manager, then a four hour Skype interview with varying team members. After that, I never heard from Hulu again. I recently found out that someone from Hulu contacted my current manager without my permission, despite knowing that I am currently employed. I consider this hugely unprofessional and it has caused undue strife in my current position.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Hulu (Santa Monica, CA) in July 2017.

Interview

An employee referred me and I was contacted immediately. Went through four interviews with three being phone and one being on-site. They flew me in from out of state and made sure I was taken care of. During the process, the recruiter and recruiting coordinator were very timely in correspondence and everyone was pleasant to interact with. You can tell that Hulu cares about individuals and take pride in their culture. Ultimately, I had an offer from another company and Hulu was not ready to make a final decision regarding my candidacy, so I had to withdraw.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Hulu (Santa Monica, CA) in July 2017.

Interview

I had a phone screen, then a technical screen on the phone with some coding on a shared coder-pad, and finally a full day on-site at their Santa Monica office

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. I interviewed at Hulu (Seattle, WA) in July 2017.

Interview

Took a phone-based online coding test and did well so they invited me out for an on-site interview. The on-site consisted of your standard hand-coding on a white board for algorithms and designs that have no application whatsoever to the work I would be doing or which I have ever done, like implementing a regular expression engine, implementing various Dog classes, and designing a high rise building.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. I interviewed at Hulu (Santa Monica, CA).

Interview

Phone screen by a fellow engineer. After that, got the call for the in person interview. Got the call with in a week and was given an offer. The whole process was very smooth and quick.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Hulu (San Antonio, TX) in June 2017.

Interview

Easy. My process was handled by a recruiter and made the whole thing very simple for me. My interview was about 20 min. My interviewer was very easy to talk to

Interview Questions