I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Lessmore in Sep 2024
Interview
The interview consisted of a call with the product and tech leads where the feedback was very positive, admitting I was overqualified. The second part consisted of a task where I was required to answer 6 emails. The third stage was a chat with a very young person that was a junior in the advertised position, which I found very odd. Received very good feedback on the task sent and it was a very informal chat. I was mostly asked about ideas and implementations that were in place in my previous company on how to keep the community engaged. The person also stated it was their first job and they wanted to move on from that role as they weren't sure this was a long term fit. A week later I was sent an email saying they wouldn't proceed with me "due to the amount and calibre of applicants". Judging by the fact that the last stage was handled by a junior with no one else on the call, and the fact that no one has been hired over the next 7 months, it is pretty obvious this wasn't a real position. Instead it seems they used it as an exercise in interviews for their junior, and to gather ideas on how to handle their community and their player service.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What events did you have to keep the player base engaged in your previous company?
I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Lessmore in Mar 2024
Interview
Prior to the interview I was asked to complete 16 hours of concept work for 2 fully wireframed mobile game ideas. When the interview came around the interviewer and director of the company was nothing short of rude and completely dismissive of the hours of free work I had put in. They were also incredibly arrogant to the point where had they offered me the position I would have declined as I could tell that they were the type of person to flaunt the fact they were the owner of the company and therefore better than you. They had already belittled me in the interview in this respect, so I would not like to know how they would treat people once a contract is signed.
A few examples of this belittling would be when the interviewer even said my concepts I worked on were "[profanity redacted]" and "really really bad". but when I pressed to ask specifically what was bad about them - I asked 3-4 times because I genuinely wanted to pick their brain to improve - they could not answer the question. Which seems to imply they just wanted to bash me rather than actually having analysed the ideas.
In addition to this, they criticised my lack of experience playing mobile games - despite being surprised I had 3-4 games on my phone beyond 100 levels -, while simultaneously bragging that they don't play games anymore and that they are a waste of time.
The interview lasted an hour, and despite numerous questions regarding my interest in the mobile games market the rejection e-mail I eventually got stated the interviewer didn't think I had any interest in learning the mobile games market - despite the 16 hours of free work I put into researching, concepting and wireframing mobile game ideas.
The contract conditions were also abysmal. The contract any designer would sign would be linked to a programmer and placed into a "pod". If any one of the two pod members were to stop working there for whatever reason, the other pod member would lose their job instantly as a result.
Overall, the interview felt very much like a "data farm" in which they are farming other people's game ideas with absolutely no intention of actually hiring anybody at all.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
- types of mobile games I played
- how far through those games I got through, ie, how many levels
- whether I played any of their games
- types of games outside of mobile I played
- asked about my mobile game concepts and how they would work from a gameplay perspective
I applied online. The process took 4 days. I interviewed at Lessmore (Birmingham, England) in Mar 2024
Interview
After a quick check of your portfolio and CV over email, they send over small details about the role (suspiciously higher than average salary) and then send a technical test
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Please find the test attached, the test requires up to 16 hours of work which you need to complete over 2 weeks after receiving