Quick interview with hiring manager. Shorter interview with tech recruiter. The hiring manager was lovely, the tech recruiter had a real chip on his shoulder about something. Note to self, don't show any personality in an interview...
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Black Crow AI (New York, NY) in Nov 2023
Interview
Simple and straight forward, only had a first interview with HHRR but they laid out the position and responsibilities really well and the communication was fluid and assertive letting me now the reasons why the process didn't continue right away.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Background and experience, description of recent roles and challenges.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Black Crow AI in Aug 2023
Interview
Everyone at this company speaks very highly of the company culture, but I can assure you the culture is not shown during the interview process. The interview process is long and very time-consuming, with eight touch points total. Both take-home assignments took a great amount of knowledge of the product and the industry, which was very time-consuming to research and complete. I have done a take-home assignment as standard before, but this company had two, the second of which was an outrageous project. People in my life expressed concern that this interview process might be just the company attempting to get free consulting from candidates, and that is what it felt like when it was all said and done. I was asked to write an article about topics related to their product and industry and then was asked to do a full breakdown of messaging on their homepage, providing them feedback on what could be changed and why, in order to improve website conversions. After that presentation, the HR contact let me know that there was great feedback and that I would have one more call with the CEO to chat about culture and answer any remaining questions. After that call, I was told that my presentation did not actually have good feedback, and they felt I did not answer questions about it well. Please keep in mind that I do not actually work for the company, and therefore have limited information about the product and did the best I could with available information. So, after 8 interviews, and two assignments, over a month later, I was told I was not a good fit for the role via email. Do not be fooled by talk about the "culture" of this company or the allure of "free fridays" because what I learned from this process is that this company is not one who values people or their time. I am very glad to have not received an offer, as I feel I dodged a major bullet. Posting this as a warning to anyone interviewing with this company. You will feel used and very unwelcomed when you speak to the team, and they will expect you to spend hours of your life doing work for them before they even decide whether they want you on their team. Below this review is a detail of all of the steps I went through. - HR - Hiring Manager - CMO - Take home assignment #1 - Sales Interview - Product Interview - Take home assignment #2 - Interview Panel - CEO - 5 sentence Rejection email
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Who are our biggest competitors, and how are they organizing their home page?
Thank you for taking the time to provide thoughtful feedback for both Black Crow and future candidates. While sadly we can’t improve your experience, we can now do better by other people who come our way. We deeply appreciate the time you took to get to know Black Crow AI and are saddened that you felt unwelcome and that your time was wasted. Both of those things are on us and directly at odds with our Human First core value. Again, thank you for your time and we wish you all the best.