First interview with the hiring manager. Second stage is a recorded case study presentation. This felt a bit impersonal and you don’t get the chance to respond to questions and doubts from the interviewer which is not ideal as they are looking for very specific things.

The recruiter interview was ok, not difficult, I got my questions answered. However, in few days I received a rejection letter like “thank you for your interest, but we can not provide detailed feedback”. I feel like that’s not respectful, the candidate spends time on your process, learning your values, everything about your company, and you don’t have 5 seconds for a personal message to say thank you. Not a nice experience, would not apply again.

I went through: 1. Recruiter screening 2. Hiring manager interview 3. Case study presentation submission (reviewed async by staff-level designers) 4. Design skills interview with 2 senior product designers While the design manager was friendly, most of the people I interviewed with didn’t seem very happy to be doing the interviews. Though I appreciate that there was no take home test, the case study video felt redundant, since I was asked to describe a recent project in the following interview anyways. Questions in the skills interview was a mix of checklist items “How do you approach async work” and vague, off-the-cuff ones like “Without giving an example, how do you design a solution?” or “Give an example of an innovative solution you’ve designed”. The followup questions from one interviewer (who seemed annoyed from the start) felt more antagonistic than curious. I came away with the impression that the team culture is more about posturing than substance.