I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Instacart (San Francisco, CA) in Jun 2021
Interview
I had to take karat interview. The interview itself is not a correct way to evaluate the candidate. You can't get any signal for the company you are interviewing. The interview process is designed around speed with less communication and less thinking process.
After the interview, karat recommendation was to move forward with onsite and the recruiter reached out saying we will be moving forward with onsite. After a week, i was told instacart interviewer who didn't interview me apparently reviewed my video and decided my system design was not up to the mark. The system design part was hardly tested for 2 mins in the karat interview.
I think it is the worst way of treating a prospective employee. Almost like an insult. If the company thinks i am not worth 45 mins of their engineer team, i would rather not work for it.
2
Other Staff Software Engineer Interview Reviews for Instacart
3 leetcode interviews, 1 system design, 1 behavioral. leetcode was hard problems and interviewers didn’t provide guidance once exercise started. no ai coding tools allowed. system design was average difficulty.
Following was the process for the Staff role:
- Technical Pre Screening
- Coding round
- 2 System design / Architecture rounds
- Hiring Manager round
If hired:
- Chat with Head of Department