I had three interviews with the HelloTeam team! They're a small company and I don't believe they have a recruiting team since they moved directly to the Hiring Manager screen (which was a 30 min interview over zoom). The initial interview went great, I was asked fairly standard questions and given a good overview of the role. At this point they asked for my references which initially was a red flag so early in the process (I was concerned they would make a decision after only one interview) but by the end I felt like they did a good job at vetting me.
The second interview, which was suppose to be the last, was with two executive team members. Only one was able to make it. This was the only interview where I think my experience was less than stellar. The HM said the VP of Engineering I would be speaking to was no-frills and that's not an exaggeration. In our 30 minute time, he did not smile once. He did nothing to build rapport or make me feel comfortable. It felt very much like I was being interrogated and I don't think I performed at my best due to the responding nerves. Also, the VP finished his questions with 10 minutes to spare and it was really awkward for me as I did not have 10 minutes of questions to dig into. I don't think it should fall on the candidate to fill that space.
The last interview was with the VP that didn't attend the second interview. It went much better than the previous one. He was personable and really dug into my experience. It was this interview where I felt I got a much better sense of what the role would be.
My final interview was on a Monday afternoon. Wednesday around lunch I reached out to get a better understanding of the timeline so I could set expectations on when a decision would be made. They responded Thursday morning and that was the last I heard from them personally. I really wished they had updated me before the weekend but I understand they had not made a decision at that time. On the following Monday, I reached out for an update and didn't hear anything so I assumed I had not gotten the role. I actually ended up finding a canned rejection email in my spam folder a few days later which is not ideal (it came from an email that had a bunch of random numbers in it, very odd). I would have prefer something a bit more personal given that I was at end stages in their process. Overall, it was a good experience. Not great but good. HelloTeam is a really small company so I don't expect them to have their ducks all in a row but focusing a bit more on the candidate experience and follow up communications would do wonders I think in improving their interview process.
I would recommend the company as long as folks don't mind a bit of small team disorganization!
