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Interviews

Standard interview processes for Solutions team members for reference

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Senior backend engineer interview process

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Step 1: Application

Require applicants to send the following:

1. CV/Resume or LinkedIn page
2. Cover letter explaining who they are, what they are passionate about and why they are applying for this job
3. Extra step to ensure they are thinkers. Add a few paragraphs about a particular topic that relates to their work, for example:
   • Their favourite learning techniques and how they apply them
   • Top productivity tips that work for them
   • Some challenges faced in remote working and how they overcame it

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Step 2: Initial interview

This step should try uncover a bit more about who they are, what their interests are and what they have done in their career thus far. It’s quite general and mostly a culture fit check.

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Step 3: Technical Assessment

If they pass the culture check, they now need to prove their skills.

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Tennis game assessment

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝘂𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮 ”𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲” 𝗶𝗻 𝗮 𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗻𝗶𝘀 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄𝘀:

• Zero to three points are given the terms “Love”, “Fifteen”, “Thirty”, and “Forty” respectively.
• If both players have the same score below three points (“Forty”) then the score is suffixed

with “All” (Example: “Thirty All”).

• If at least three points have been scored by both players, and the score is equal, then the

score is “Deuce”.

• If at least three points have been scored by both players but one player has one more

point than the other, then the score for the player ahead is “Advantage”.

• A game is won by the first player to score at least four points in total and at least two more

points than their opponent. 𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗲𝘀:

• You only need to implement the logic for the “game” component. The “match” and “set”

scoring are out of scope.

• You can use whichever language you feel most comfortable in.
• Please upload a zip file containing all of the files for this assessment.

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Alternative assessment

Create an app which randomly generates a simple mathematical question and displays it to the user. The user can then enter an answer into an input field provided and submit. The app then checks if the answer is correct for the given question and displays feedback - either showing that the answer was correct, or that it was incorrect and displaying the correct answer.

1. The question should be in the format “What is number operation number?”, e.g “What is 25 x 5?”, “What is 5 % 2”?
2. The answer should be rounded up to two decimal places if its not an integer.

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Step 4: Technical Interview

If the assessment was of sufficient quality to move forward, they should now have a technical interview with the CTO and a senior developer. In this step, you go through the assessment with the candidate, discuss any issues or highlights and discuss trade-offs made. You should also have a list of questions related to higher level architecture that you can go through with the candidate, for example you can discuss:

• Design patterns that the candidate is familiar with and if they name some, ask how they would be applied
• Code coupling, what it is and how it can be reduced
• What are the different types of testing? How do you know when you have ‘enough’ code coverage?

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Step 5: Final interview with a founder or member of management

If they are technically proficient and a good culture fit, the penultimate step is meeting with a high-ranking staff member. This step is a sense-check on all the steps that have come before to ensure there are no more red flags. More sensitive matters such as salary could also be discussed here, if not done already

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Step 6: Offer