Entretien téléphonique de pré qualification puis beaucoup de temps avant l'étape suivante. Entretien intéressant mais questions pas forcément toujours constructives pour le poste. Plus de question sur le salaire que les compétences par exemple...
I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Novarc Technologies (North Vancouver, BC) in Feb 2025
Interview
It was a lengthy interview process. First round was a leetcode round which I could give anytime withing the 7 days, it lasted for an hour. The second round was a Machine Learning Technical Interview where I was asked questions about solving different tasks related to object detection, segmentation related to the product of the company, along with my experiences in my past job.
The rounds following that were supposed to be leetcode live coding round, a lead engineer technical interview, and finally an HR interview,
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Which segmentation algorithms do I know, and which recent technique could be used to identify the splashes in welding.
I applied online. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Novarc Technologies (Burnaby, BC) in May 2025
Interview
The interview process for PM happens in 4 stages: screener, technical interviews, personality fit, chat with the CEO. The screener and the technical interviews were both very straightforward on average. There were technically two Project Manager positions open at the time, one for the "project team" and one for the "product team", the difference between them was a PMP requirement and $20k in the maximum salary range.
The project team seems to make all the money and get more focus from the company. Two people offhandedly mentioned that the product team coordinators would sometimes need help when they are "overwhelmed" or "overloaded". The project team management is headed by a Senior Project Manager but the product team has no such equivalent.
Novarc Technologies has grown from ~20 employees to ~150 employees in 5 years. They seem to be having growing pains from their rapid change and it left me feeling there was something missing about the company vibe. I arrived 10 minutes early for 2 rounds of scheduled in-person interviews and the front door was locked with nobody around the reception area. They talked almost exclusively about the products and the business with no one mentioning anything about the people or the culture despite that being featured in their posting. The company had moved to a new office a few weeks earlier and told me there were still boxes everywhere. I saw what looked like everything set up to get working as quickly as possible rather than taking the time for organizing/tidying at the beginning rather than living with "good enough" indefinitely.
The VP of Customer Operations ("employee number 12") commented on my recent PMP certifcation by saying "Welcome to the mafia." and still does IT for the company on top of his other responsibilities. Each candidate under serious consideration spends 15 minutes chatting with the CEO before receiving an offer to ensure that person will fit well with Novarc and their three core values "Hungry, Humble, and Smart". I was told that if you don't embody those three values then you won't be a long-term fit. The CEO was travelleing at the time which impacted the interview process. This seems like a nice tradition from the startup days but could become a bottleneck, especially since there were 20+ Novarc jobs actively posted at the time.
I was removed from consideration for a valid reason and received a rejection email stating "we have ultimately chosen another candidate whose background and qualifications more closely align with the specific needs of this role". That position was re-posted a short time later which makes me think that isn't what happened.