Ask HN: Interview Process Expectations | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Interview Process Expectations

2 pointsthrowthrowthro3 comments

Hi all, I recently interviewed for an internship position at a company and am looking to get feedback on the process.

* Sent a cold email to see if they were interested in bringing me on as an intern. Get back an enthusiastic response. A video call was scheduled that their head of engineering ghosted on. When emailed, he didn't respond. After contacting my original contact, they apologized and we scheduled an in person interview.

* The in person interview went well. Talked to the whole team (including leadership) and everyone seemed excited about bringing me on. They then sent me a coding exercise to do over the weekend.

* I completed the coding exercise and felt I did a reasonable job on it. After sending it back to them, the head of engineering asked me how to run my code (python). After that I received no response from them. Waited a little over a week and sent a follow up to the head of engineering which didn't receive a response. Finally emailed my original point of contact and got an email saying that they were heading in a different direction.

I've found the process frustrating. I spent a day of my time completing their exercise and expected some response in a reasonable time frame.

Are my expectations unreasonable?

No your expectations are not unreasonable, but your results are not uncommon either.

You might consider yourself lucky though, usually when things are disorganized at the interview stage and there is poor communication there it is a sign that the company suffers from the same thing. There are of course exceptions when shit just hit the fan for them and so they struggled during a time period, but more often than not I find when companies lack good interviewing skills and basic process they themselves struggle with organization and communication.

It's a numbers game. Investing a lot of time/interest in one position is a sure way to be disappointed.

Instead, if you into 'interview/job hunting mode' you get more value for your investment by applying your interview prep and portfolio prep across many possible positions.

Some people flat out deny any coding exercises especially when they have great references and/or portfolio (GitHub or otherwise). If that isn't you, be prepared to do some (short) coding exercises to prove your expertise and interest in an area, and you will knock them out quickly especially if they are all in the same language/framework you are skilled in.

Good luck!

Sadly, it happens more often than you would think. I would suggest keeping your hopes up for other companies that you can apply to, taking whatever learnings you can from this process, and move on.

Definitely ask for feedback from the previous company. Most companies provide feedback as to what went wrong.

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