I applied through a recruiter. The process took 6 months. I interviewed at ThoughtSpot (Palo Alto, CA) in Oct 2018
Interview
TL;DR- Strongly recommend not to interview with the West Coast Customer success team. There is one other review on glassdoor and that person had a similar experience.
The most unprofessional team that I have ever interviewed with and they have no respect for a candidate's time.
Thoughtspot is a great product based on the demo that I have seen and has a strong word in the market. But if the customer success team treats it customers the way it treats the candidates, I doubt how long will that last
Went through couple of phone screens with the hiring manager and a potential peer on the team. Was then asked to speak with another person in London. This person did not join the Skype meeting and I was informed 15 minutes later that he got pulled in a client emergency. This happened for FOUR days straight.
Anyway, the next round was with the hiring manager again, in person at the Palo Alto office. I arrive 10 minutes before the scheduled time and there is no one at the reception with any information whether I am scheduled to meet the manager. Some nice sales guys directed me to the floor above where the Customer Success team sits. I wait in that area. 20 minutes later, I receive a call from the hiring manager that he is coming from a client office and has gotten late. Great. I wait a bit more
More conversations with Chief Customer Officer after this. This was a cordial and engaging conversation. The hiring manager goes ahead and makes an offer. We negotiate on the salary for about a week and agree verbally on the terms.
The hiring manager then asks for references before he can share the offer letter. I ask for his schedule and set up time with my references. And, surprise, he does not call them at the scheduled time
A week later he says that there has been a change in the hiring plan since it is the end of the year and will get back to me in a month or so.
Couple of months later he gets back to me via the recruiter saying that the role is open again with some change in responsibilities. I have another round of conversations with the hiring manager and Chief Customer Officer. This time they have absolutely no vision of what the new role means or how it fits into the organization. It is a quasi-consulting role with some growth responsibility. A month later the hiring manager says that he does not want to extend the offer.
Six months of dragging along and utter waste of time
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
How would you convince customer to use Thoughtspot over existing products?
We appreciate your feedback. We regret that you had an unfortunate candidate experience, which is something we can certainly improve upon.
As a dynamic growth company, we did extend our engagement with you to ensure opportunity alignment. While, we did not find a suitable match for you, we sincerely wish you well and thank you for considering ThoughtSpot.
Other Customer Success Manager interview reviews for ThoughtSpot
Their were several rounds of interviews with different individuals and moved to a panel interview. I was asked to prepare a deck and present to a panel as though they are a customer
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at ThoughtSpot in June 2018
Interview
Very long process. It took more than 5 weeks from 1st call to Last decision. I did 3 phone interviews, 2 Skype, and 2 online tests during this process (Not all in 1 day, every week 1 or 2). I did very well and I still feel I am the right person for the job. I am not sure where it went wrong. I followed up (call, text) multiple times and waited 10 days for the feedback after the last interview and they send me a general email saying I am not suitable for the position.
I wonder when they realized this? This is a very unpleasant experience. I was at least expecting a call from them, after all, I spend more than 6 hrs overall on this.
I wonder how they are planning to do customer success if they don't know how to treat interview candidates. I don't care at this point. Good luck to the company.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Asked about my experience in customer success and situational based questions.
Hello-- I'm sorry to hear you had a negative experience. It's difficult to tell from your feedback whether it was the external recruiter or our internal team that impacted your experience. It is our practice to followup phone screens with emails, as we have a small internal team-- but we do always provide detailed interview feedback to help candidates understand why they weren't qualified for the position. If you have additional feedback, please do feel free to respond to our candidate feedback survey we send to all candidates. And best of luck in your search.