Hello everyone,
Overall:
Lots of runaround, unprofessional questions, and racial discrimination during interview process. I went though multiple rounds of interviews with HR and technical teams, and what a waste of my time!
Specifics are as follows:
1. Their questions were unrelated or not related to the context of the job itself. The interviews were very difficult, seems like I was applying for a job at Google or Facebook. For those of you who passed GMAT or LSAT, test preparation will be very useful. They are not asking you "tell me how you managed or behaved in this scenario", they are going to ask you "given A does this and B does this, is there any correlation and causation among C and D". There was a little about engineering management (code promotions, DevOps, pipelines, automated suites) and honestly, I think they were looking for a Sr. Interpreter between their American and Japanese offices rather than a manager. I was ready to discuss all the major considerations around DevOps, but it seems like either they are not using it or they are not interested in inquiring what my experiences so far have been.
2. All the previous comments about user interview experience at Indeed hold water. Again, interviews are unprofessionally designed, interviewers were looking for a specific Indeed-type of resource who I am obviously not (and I bet the majority of readers, as well). Their best bet would be to hire resources from Google or Yahoo, since these companies have their own search engine teams.
3. During the last round of interviews, one of interviewers has fallen asleep, and in fact, he was sleeping half of the interview. Also, if you are applying for their role(s) in Japan office, please be advised that you have to speak Japanese (even though they are not saying it explicitly on their website) OR otherwise you ain't gonna be able to make it.
4. I tried to ask very intelligent questions, but no one was able to provide very specific answers. It seems like their managers either do not read their own engineering blogs or do not really care.
5. Be ready to invest minimum 1 week of preparation for the whole process. Starting from reading their blogs and behavioral questions ending by very weird questions about Japanese culture. They are not testing what you know or what you can tell them based on your experience; instead, they are testing whether you know how Indeed does its business.
6. There were many inconsistencies among different interviewers. For instance, the HR lady who handled my case would say one thing, and techies would refute her point of view and would say the other thing. The HRs were very unprofessional and refused to communicate the overall results of the whole process.
7. Last comment. I was not even able to get my head around what the interviewers were saying in 25% of cases due to their heavy Japanese accent, and so you are better off brushing up your Japanese skills in order to communicate with them. I had to ask them over again to repeat what they were saying, and apparently the other engineering manager got upset, and then I gave up on this. Do not fall in the trap of thinking that their Japanese jobs are for English speakers or for someone from South America. Total waste of time. Learn Japanese before applying for their jobs OR do not waste your and their time.
Overall, I am gonna give this interview experience a rank of "-10" on the scale from 1 to 5, 5 being the best interview experience that I have ever had (Microsoft for instance).
Lessons learned:
1. If interviews become too difficult to handle in terms of preparation time and attitude of interviewers, drop the whole thing. This way you will save your precious time.
2. Do not be naive and do not think Indeed needs people from the U.S. for their jobs in their Japan office. Japanese team is very culturally selfish and they are going to refuse you no matter how many years of technical and managerial experiences you have gained behind your belt.
3. For the future, I will not be considering all-day panel interviews unless the company name is either Google or Microsoft. Even though their office is based out of Austin, TX, the whole day panel interview is with the Japanese team and those guys (with all due respect to Japan) are discriminating English speaking all the way.
4. 2 days of preparation is enough. If you fail at Indeed and if you definitely have gained experiences as an engineering director or Sr. manager, then it is not your fault. It just means that you have been at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and interviewed by wrong (and I emphasize, culturally selfish) resources.
Feel free to email me in private and I will do my best to prepare you for their interview process, even though I strongly encourage you not to waste your time.
Hopefully, Indeed's CEO will read this post and make sure that their cultural barriers are eliminated and interviews become smoother.
