I applied online. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Life.Church (Edmond, OK) in Apr 2023
Interview
I applied for the role at the end of March 2023. The process was long - almost 3 months from application to offer. Albeit, there were some scheduling conflicts which extended the process about four weeks between the rounds. Definitely do not apply if you are just “looking for a job”. After submitting my application, It took about 1 week to schedule the phone screen with an HR rep. Three Weeks Later, I conducted a video interview with the hiring manager and another technical team member. Most questions were culture & calling based. Following the video interview, I was given a series of assessments and a technical challenge to do on my own time. One assessment was the Myers’s-Briggs, another was basic skills (Logic, Reading, Writing, and Math), and two others were leadership-based / behavioral. Two weeks following my assessments and technical challenge, I advanced on to a third interview which was more a review of my assessments and the technical challenge. The hiring manager and department lead, reviewed all my assessments and results with me. Last my spouse and I were invited for an onsite visit at the Central Offices for a final interview. The onsite visit took about 1.5 days, but was spread out over 3 separate days. The first two days was more meeting other staff and members of the technical team. Attending service on Saturday and visiting multiple other Life.Church campuses in the OKC metro. Overall each day took about half of the 3 days. The last day was the final interview, I received a site tour and the final interview was two rounds with a cross-section of team members. I was asked about 20 questions total in the two interview sprints, 1/5 were technical. 4/5 were culture, character, and chemistry based. Following the onsite interview, I was offered the role.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1. What drew you to apply to this role at Life.Church? 2. Tell me about your relationship with Christ and how it impacts the decisions you make? 3. Tell me about a time when you encountered a technical challenge that you didn’t know how to solve and tell me the steps you took to solve that challenge. 4. Tell me about your experience using IaaC platforms and tools. 5. Tell me about the Cloud Providers that you have experience using and the specific products you have used in them. 6. Imagine you are hiring you, what is the risk in hiring you? 7. Tell me about your weaknesses
I applied online. I interviewed at Life.Church (Oklahoma City, OK) in Jan 2021
Interview
No real technical questions whatsoever. Only typical interview questions followed by constant persistence on whether you assist their particular brand of church and if you're willing to fully commit to theirs, regardless of whether you're a Christian or not and what that actually means to you and what it has cost you.
The people doing the interview didn't know anything about the subject matter, they were placed there (apparently based on availability) only to see if you would be willing to live according to their Church doctrine. No heads up was given about this unusual, awkward and strange approach.
Besides that, the pay is a little on the low side even for their market plus you have to do Voluntary work and assist their particular Church. But that would be all o.k., and in the right context even great!! Except for one detail:
I've never experienced anything so awkward and strange in my professional life. It was really off-putting.
I understand this is a non-profit and that non-profits do get some exceptions on Chapter VII but I didn't find it that ethical to be asking if a person is going to agree with your organization as if it was an army: 100%, 100% of the time, much less a non-profit, before asking the very first actual technical question on the subject matter to measure competency.
Given the negative reviews posted here I can't say I'm surprised, they are probably trying to reduce their turn around and for their applicants to end up disappointing themselves by turning a blind eye due to excitement and then finding out they're not pleased with their decision, on either end.
I wouldn't recommend unless you're a previous member of their Church and want to serve them or don't care about your individuality in the face of other human beings telling you how to think.
At the very least, it was optional. Through their awkward persistence they did give me an opportunity to make a decision and I decided against moving further.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
Watch our Live stream and see if you would like to move to basically live inside this Church, even before we know if you can get the actual job done.