I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Sincere (Framingham, MA) in Mar 2024
Interview
The interview process comprised several stages, following the structure outlined on the company's website: recruiter, team lead, take-home challenge, team meeting, 24-hour challenge, and 1:1(s) with the C-Suite.
Overall I found the process long, but each step fair.
The initial calls were standard, focusing on introducing myself and assessing cultural fit.
While I have reservations about take-home challenges in general, this one—a simple to-do app—was reasonable in time and relevance and also allowed some room to shine or add extras.
The team meeting involved 30-minute panel interviews with the relevant team covering technical and cultural aspects, fairly standard.
The 24-hour challenge was unique and I really enjoyed it. For me it gave an excuse to do something I'd been meaning to anyway, that I was passionate about.
The C-Suite interviews were also unique for me. It was two fairly intense conversations mostly assessing cultural fit and served as a final chance to sell myself. It also served as a look into management - as a smallish company you talk to everyone and it's good to know if you're aligned with the people in charge.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Some technical stuff about React, Next and other Front-End Technologies, as well as cultural-fit questions.
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Sincere in Apr 2024
Interview
My interview experience with Sincere was not very sincere. They constantly reduced the salary for the role - starting off by telling me one number, then calling back the next day to say now its $10k less than that but the “CEO gets creative with the offers” so its worth it, and by the end of the process offering to drop me down to a lower level role at $30k less than where we started.
If you are interviewing for this role, I suggest you take a look at the CEOs blog (google "matt douglas sincere") and you can read some other red flags for yourself. You will also have to complete a sudden, arbitrarily timed “24 hour challenge” near the end of the process, which you can also find on the blog.
Ultimately I regret wasting so much time with this company, and I suggest avoiding an interview here.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The challenge is to create a basic todo application using the starter
application codebase. The application should utilize Next.js, TypeScript,
functional React components, React Hooks, SWR, and Tailwind CSS. You are expected to complete the list of user stories below.
Your submission will be evaluated on multiple criteria:
- Was it returned on time?
- Did you complete all of the stories?
- Does it work?
- How well is TypeScript utilized?
- Did you use functional components and hooks?
- Did you use [`useSWR`](https://swr.vercel.app/docs/api) and [`mutate`](https://swr.vercel.app/docs/mutation)?
- How accurate is the styling to the mocks? Does it look and feel good?
- How well was [Tailwind CSS](https://tailwindcss.com/docs) utilized?
- Code quality and organization.
Hello - Thank you for sharing this feedback with us. It’s always helpful to hear about your personal experience with the interview process. I’m sorry to hear you were disappointed with the terms of the offer you received.
The 24 Hour Challenge you referenced is a key part of our hiring process (see https://www.sincere.com/careers). We’re thinking of starting a Hall of Fame for the legendary responses we’ve received over the years! We wish you the best of luck. Thanks again. - Kevin in Recruiting
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Sincere (Framingham, MA) in June 2023
Interview
Interview questions were mostly conversational and average. I got some serious tech bro vibes from the CEO. Their 24 hour challenge was odd. What was even more odd was how particular they were about the timing of that while they dragged the process out for 2 weeks after my interview before giving me a canned rejection letter. This was while I was telling them I had other offers in hand.