I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Trunk Tools in Sept 2025
Interview
I had a similar interview experience as others. The hiring process ends up being an exercise in free work for the company.
The recruiter reached out to me almost 1 month after I applied. The intro call went well, as did the following interview with the engineering manager. The third step was to complete a take-home coding project, and I was promised a $50 Amazon gift card or a $50 donation to a charity of my choice (I picked the charity). I completed the project and was scheduled for an additional 2 interviews, one to go over my take-home project and the other was an NLP system design interview.
The interviewers for the take-home test review seemed more interested in going off-tangent with their questions, like "how is the technology for this specific library implemented?" or "can you explain the mathematical differences between certain machine learning models?". I didn't get a chance to finish presenting my report for the project in the hour's time because of the curveball questions that had nothing to do with my implementation.
The NLP system design interview went better. At the end, the interviewer told me that I had designed the best architecture diagram he had seen in all the interviews he has done.
The next week, I got a canned rejection email. I got further in the process that some other interviewers have reported, but the end result still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The job posting is still open, so I whole-heartedly believe that this company is scamming interviewees. And no confirmation about whether they made the donation on my behalf or not.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Create an intent classification system given user queries.
Design an NLP system that extracts information from free-text notes and possibly detects specification violations.
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Trunk Tools (New York, NY) in Mar 2025
Interview
Pretty standard rounds, talked to a few different people, completed some technical rounds, and then.... nothing. Ghosted. Literally had to email a couple of times to get a canned response back. No feedback, even after putting in 6hrs+ of my time.
I get its probably not realistic to respond to applicants that don't make the first sift, but when you're several rounds in, it's just rude.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Trunk Tools in July 2025
Interview
SCAM WARNING: hiring process turns into them using a coding exercise for free work. I experienced the same pattern as other interview reviews, which I wish I would've read first. DO NOT waste your time with this company.
Recruiter reached out with intro call which went well, then I had an interview with an Engineering manager which went well also. I was given a take-home coding exercise and offered a $50 amazon gift card for my time.
I completed and submitted it, then got denied without any reasons given. I reached out for feedback in place of the promised gift card, they didn't reply or give me a gift card lmao.
Please report this company if the same thing happens to you, they need to be held accountable. I don't see a single positive interviewing experience on their profile, they're serially scamming interviewees.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Create a classification model using some input question data.