Cleo (United Kingdom) Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. I interviewed at Cleo (United Kingdom).

Interview

A recruiter screen followed by a take-home assignment. The latter was typical of what I've come to expect from Ruby shops — minimal effort on their end with the gauziest possible assessment criteria. These people will waste your time.

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Cleo (United Kingdom) in December 2020.

Interview

Very smooth interview process. Ability to talk to multiple members of the team and get their perspectives on Cleo. Great way to gain more insights into day to day work. What was great, is that every stage, there was ample time to ask questions. Easy to see that the interviews are not only for Cleo to determine if the. the candidate is right for the role, but also for the candidate to decide if Cleo is the right environment for them.

The whole process took around 2-3 weeks. First stage was the call with the internal talent team, followed by chat with 2 of the engineers, focused on the company values. Following that, there's a take home exercise. Next two calls were QA around the solution to the take home exercise and 45 minute pairing session to build up on it and extend the functionality. Finally, short chat with VP of engineering and 2 non-tech team members.

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3+ weeks. I interviewed at Cleo (United Kingdom) (London, England).

Interview

I interviewed earlier in the year for Product Analyst role (vacancy still live as of October!). I reached final round and found experience poor.

- The team were incapable of doing remote interviews, but the irony is that they have now marketed the role as a remote role. They did my SQL coding challenge over Zoom with Coderpad & a deck with the Qs. Interviewer was screen sharing & switched windows between the deck with the questions and the Coderpad. It made for frustrating task as I couldn't refer back to the question when I was coding! The SQL task was badly worded. They squeezed too much in 1hr technical interview.
- They lowball your experience & the responsibilities. I've done final rounds for a few 'product Data Scientist' roles. There's way more breadth to topics Cleo AI covered vs Product DS final round at a FAANG! In contrast the topics for Cleo AI covered things as advanced as Bayesian inference, not just experimentation & SaaS metrics. The team here seem to look down on analytics & inference.
- The talent team were generally evasive, never replied to my emails. They talked a lot about industry 'benchmarking' of roles when I asked about how they define Data Scientist vs Analyst. Data Scientists only do production ML apparently. Yet expertise in Python packaging & development won't cut it. Funnily enough the take-home task had in the title 'Data Scientist (Product Analytics)' - hmm contrary to that benchmarking.
- Take-home task on SaaS metrics on their data was actually quite nice to do (about 2 hours of coding - the deck takes way more time). For all the effort on the deck it was never a part of the final round though.
- The interviewers were unfriendly and they seemed disinterested in being there, so I wouldn't have accepted an offer there on that basis. Some of the questions were trite 'gotcha' questions. No-one seems good enough for them (shines thru in the conversations). I've been approached by recruiters from many agencies for the role after I interviewed, hmmm, they say almost everyone they approach has been contacted about the role! Red flags, They've probably exhausted all the UK talent dry to pivot this as 'remote EU' role.

Application

I applied online. The process took a week. I interviewed at Cleo (United Kingdom) (London, England) in October 2020.

Interview

Its the worst HR ever seen, their process and questions are too bad total waste of time. they asked question and they are not listening to the candidate response. please do not interview if you don't have open positions. simply for name shake do not invite for interview. to be honest this is my first review in glassdoor about one company

Application

I applied through other source. The process took 1+ week. I interviewed at Cleo (United Kingdom) (London, England) in October 2020.

Interview

I was approached by a recruiter, whose approach was very nice and professional. I had a screening with the recruiter then was asked to take a home-challenge assignment. Eventually, was told the process is "broken" and I didn't make it past that.

Application

I applied online. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Cleo (United Kingdom) in August 2020.

Interview

The candidate experience was among the best I've had. Communication was clear and prompt, and there was useful and genuine feedback (both negative and positive) given at every stage, which I think is really important when a candidate takes their own time to do things like a take-home test. After receiving the offer, I was even offered a chat with anyone I wanted to speak to, including the CEO, just to give me a chance to get more info before making my mind up. One bit of constructive feedback I'd give is that the the cadence of interviews/stages didn't quite match up at various points to what I was expecting. E.g. one description of stages said the take-home test would immediately follow the initial screen, but I had an interview with a data scientist in between these stages.

Interview

Approached by a recruiter on LinkedIn, had an initial phone call to hear about the role followed by a generic first interview going through my CV with him. I was then given an at home task to create a presentation, and was rejected off the back of this. The presentation was about engagement and retention, and I was told to take 2-3 hours producing 5-8 slides for the main part. The feedback I received was primarily about going into more depth - however, given the time taken to process data and produce a presentation, along with the limited number of slides, meant it would be impossible to produce anything extra unless you spend several days on it rather than the suggested time. Unfortunately, I felt the process did not seem well thought out and from the feedback it seemed that the reviewer of the presentation was expecting something similar to what would be produced in house, with little consideration for the amount of time given or the lack of prior knowledge about the datasets and methodologies used at Cleo. Personally, I would not recommend wasting your time applying here whilst the interview process remains the same.

Application

I applied online. The process took 2+ months. I interviewed at Cleo (United Kingdom) (London, England) in April 2020.

Interview

- 15 minute phone screen.
- Take home task which took about two hours.
- 90 minute Interview over zoom.

The process was really positive, the interviews felt more like a discussion than a grilling. However all of it did take a little longer than I was expecting.

Application

I applied online. The process took a week. I interviewed at Cleo (United Kingdom) (London, England) in February 2020.

Interview

I applied online. Then the recruiter reached out to me and we scheduled an initial phone screening. He was very unfriendly and didn't make me feel comfortable at all. After the phone screening, I received a take-home assignment which I should submit within 48 hours.

The take-home assignment was about creating a SPA with React which basically should show 2 pages (with tabs) and fetching data from an API which then should be displayed in rows. Each row should have further functionality like collapsing details and trigger HTTP Requests.

Plus they asked for state management tools (like Redux) and side effects libraries (like Redux-saga) and unit tests, ideally all written in TypeScript. Given the time constraint of 3 hours tops, I want to see that developer who comes up with all of this within that given time. There was not even a design given so you had to come up with something on your own.

In the end, I submitted the task a day later or two. I didn't use TypeScript, Redux and also haven't written any unit tests because I took the time constraint serious.

After my submission, the recruiter told me that he would be in touch very soon. One week later I still didn't hear back anything so I shoot him an email. Literally 5 minutes later I received a call by him and I actually knew already what was coming. He told me that I didn't meet the expectations and that my code was not good enough. I cut him off and said thanks and goodbye.

What a complete waste of time and unpleasant process.

Interview

Applied, asked to attend a telephone interview with recruiter, subsequent presentation....
Interviewer was 30 minutes late on the 1st call and did not attend the second and no contact for several days there after. Poor experience and signs of a chaotic business.