I applied online. I interviewed at Toptal in Dec 2018
Interview
This was easily the worst interview I have ever attended. I applied for the role, I got a fairly quick response telling me to schedule a call and I did. The interviewer came unto the call and after a very short convo, she said I have an African accent and she found it difficult understanding me. The most shocking bit of the call was that the lady in-question is African and from her accent you could tell she's not been away from Africa for long. I was so shocked and angry at the same time that I literally did not utter a word for the rest of the short call.
I have worked remotely for a client in the US for 6 months and before then I had worked for 2 years for a British company and they never complained about understanding me or anything like that.
I still cannot comprehend the logic behind posting a remote job offering to everybody all over the world, reviewing an African's application and asking them to make out time to meet with you only to expect a Western accent from them. It makes no sense and I only do not find this boxed way of thinking very unprofessional but completely disrespectful and intolerable.
I spoke to a couple of other people who went through the same process with Toptal and I got similar responses from them as well. I did not expect this from an elite organisation like Toptal. The good side of the story is that I am happy I found out how boxed folks over there are sooner than later because I couldn't have possibly forgiven myself if I ever worked for an organisation like this.
6
Other Backend Engineer interview reviews for Toptal
I applied through other source. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Toptal in Apr 2021
Interview
First 10 minute's interview. Rejected for low level of English and poor communication. Put on hold for 6 months. Seriously? You go there and do the interview again, I do not have time. Forget it
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me a time you exceeded expectations? Are we still asking these questions? Stop it, please
I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Toptal (San Francisco, CA) in Mar 2021
Interview
I did a difficult online assignment, lots of questions for a really short amount of time.
P.S. the questions are not software dev related they were mostly about solving patterns and mathematical questions.