I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at AltSchool (San Francisco, CA)
Interview
Phone call with recruiter, phone call with someone higher up in the company, then sent a coding challenge. The coding challenge was time consuming. A week after submitting my coding challenge (theoretically after someone reviewed it) I was asked to come in for an on-sight and sent an interview itinerary and everything. I was interviewed by one very young man (an easy css task, which I completed) before being informed by another guy that they must have "missed something on in my coding challenge," and that they weren't going to give me an offer. I hadn't even had the chance to speak with anyone about the work I did on the coding challenge. I took a day off of work for the onsite, and I spent many hours on their outrageous coding challenge (which I built out to their specifications and then some). Lesson learned, I probably won't waste my time on a coding challenge again until I have an onsite first. Also, I think it is very unprofessional ask someone to leave at the beginning of an interview.
I applied online and then got an email from an internal recruiter asking to set up a phone call with the hiring manager. I had the call with the manager and it went well so the hiring manager then sent me a written exercise to complete. I sent my response the day after the phone call with the hiring manager and then the day after I sent it in, the hiring manager emailed me to set up an in-person interview.
During my interview I met with the hiring manager and three other people (including a co-founder). I sent thank you emails to all four people I met with and three of them actually responded, which is rare in my experience and gave me a good impression of the team. When the hiring manager responded to my thank you email, they said that they would talk with everyone I met with to hear their feedback and then get back to me about next steps. It's been 22 days since that email from the hiring manager and I haven't heard from anyone.
I'm not upset that I didn't get an offer as the hiring manager was transparent about how many people they were considering. What I'm upset about is that they didn't have the courtesy to send me even a generic rejection email after all the time I spent interviewing. It was a very unprofessional end to the process and left me with a pretty negative impression of the company.
After submitting my resume and cover letter, I had a phone screen with the Head of Partnerships. This was a standard phone screen where he asked me about my interest in AltSchool along with questions about my background. At the end of this phone screen, he invited me to the next round of the interview process. He specifically mentioned that he appreciated how I kept my answers short and to the point.
The next stage of interviews involved a video interview with 2 current partner success leads and another video interview with another Head of Partnerships. The questions at both of these interviews were fairly standard.
Overall nothing about this process was surprising or too out of the ordinary.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about a project you managed or implemented.