Vonq interview questions

There are 4 rounds, mostly discussion about your qualifications and experience. The interview process is quick and once you are selected you can expect offer asap, negotiation is also accepted in this company

The application process was a little strange in a couple of places. Firstly I never received a job spec. I was put in touch via a recruiter, who brought Vonq to my attention. I spoke for 45 minutes with someone who I believe to be the lead developer for the growing UK based team. It was a pleasant conversation and I'd go as far as to say the best opening call I have had with a company recently. I was put through to the technical assessment phase, which consisted of a coding task. There was an option to do this either as a paired programming exercise, or a take home test. I favoured the take home option, but was happy to compromise that I discuss (via email) my thoughts/approach to the problem before I attempted to solve it. The technical assessment was strange in that there was minimal detail to the problem (all information was contained in a couple of short slides). It appeared to me on discussion with the lead developer that the assessment was to replicate the scenario of being assigned a loosely defined ticket. The problem was to implement in Python a solution to a non-trivial algorithm, that seemed to be a variant on the bin packing problem. However the solution wasn't to be a simple stand-alone script, (as many technical assessment seem to be). I had to somehow deploy my solution as a working API using AWS. I wasn't provided with an AWS account, and so had to use my own, and foot the (albeit very minimal) costs of hosting my solution. I gave a detailed email explaining my thoughts and approach to the problem, and received little useful guidance. I was concerned that the vague "you shouldn't spend more than 2 hours coding" timeframe was going to be way too short to implement a solution and deploy it. Particularly as I was not familiar with how I would deploy my solution. After reading around into what the appropriate algorithm was to solve the problem, I discovered it was already solved and that implementations of this algorithm exist online. If this task was to be a realistic 'how would you approach this in the real world' I considered I was use a tried and tested solution rather than attempting to reinvent the wheel. As a result I spent most of the rest of my time focussing on the deployment side of the problem. I've deployed and setup Django servers before, but its not something you do every day, and indeed I hadn't done this for a couple of years, so was definitely rusty/googling around for guidance. In the end I managed to get an API deployed containing the solution to the main problem (although not all sub tasks) within an afternoon. Overall I considered this a success, but felt I had massively rushed the whole task, taking shortcuts wherever possible to get myself to this respectable point. I also noted that I hadn't actually written much Python as I had clearly stated my solution was heavily based off the implementation of the algorithm I found online (something I made clear I had done). I was rejected at this stage of the application process, with the underlying theme being that they expect more from a senior developer (which is a decision I'm not contesting). I was also criticised for seemingly 'not understanding' the implementation of the algorithm. I was disappointed that the task seemed poorly structured and unrealistic for the time frame. Perhaps Vonq are looking for someone who are already fully familiar with their tech stack, but this wasn't made clear beforehand if they are. In summary: + Quick process: (Monday initial call, late Tuesday sent task, Weds afternoon I did the task, late Thursday I had feedback) + Interesting company/projects + Good initial chat with lead developer - Poorly defined task, with minimal guidance provided despite my detailed efforts - Unrealistic timeframe for someone who isn't overly familiar with every part of the problem - Had to host my solution at my own cost Given the lack of job spec and seemingly poorly defined task perhaps I was one of the first to go through their application process for this role.