I applied online. I interviewed at Toptal (Belgrade, Central Serbia) in Feb 2022
Interview
I've made just the first part, that was the English test with a recruiter. The meeting started on time, and she just asked me questions about my background and experience. After lesse then 10min, she told me my English wasn't eligible to move foward. It was very demotivating, because I'm an Upper Intermediate certified. My thought is they didn't want to move me forward because I don't have many work experiences.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What is the technologies do you work?
Tell the last project you're working?
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Toptal in Aug 2020
Interview
The interview had 4 stages. Each stage had a different interviewer and they all were friendly with a professional attitude.
The first stage is a language and personality assessment.
The second one, in my case and for my specialization, was a 120 minutes coding challenge with 3 difficult algorithms. I consider this part the most difficult from the technical point of view.
The third interview was a live coding challenge with two more approachable algorithms . I was given 15 minutes to solve each of them. This is also not that simple because 15 minutes is a very short time so you don't really have time to make and correct more than 1 mistake if you don't solve the tasks right away.
The last stage was a fullstack project for which I was given two weeks to complete. This was more approachable in my experience because I got to actually use and show the skills I use most in my work. The assessment of the mini project was very thorough, and I actually enjoyed that because I could showcase all my work to someone who really understood the work behind it.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I am not allowed to give away the actual questions but I can say if you go for the fullstack specialization you definetly need to know algorithms well. Younger candidates straight out of school/university may actually be at an advantage here because. Otherwise, Make sure to train well for it.