I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Help Scout
Interview
I get tons of recruiters reaching out to me, but this one was friendly and personalized and seemed very deliberate, like he actually took time to read my profile. He sent me the hiring process and some published interview questions. Spoke with the hiring manager first, who was very nice and friendly and was definitely an easygoing conversation. Recruiter followed up very quickly after my first interview to set up the next one, which was great. Second interview included a code review with two engineers. didn't make it past second interview, but they got back fairly quickly to let me know.
Going through the resume. The interviewer is pretty rude and condescending. Asks if you have any questions, but then immediately responds with "it's in the ad description" or "we have a blog post about that". Doesn't seem to be a great work culture.
Also, they mentioned they would move to the next step in the interview process and never did. Very unprofessional.
Becca here. I'm the Head of People Ops at Help Scout. I'm so sorry you've had a negative experience interviewing with us. :( We do sometimes refer to blog posts so candidates can get a deeper understanding of our culture without taking up too much time during the initial interview. I'm sorry if that came across as rude or condescending. The other details you mention don't follow with guidelines and training that we have in place for our hiring managers so I will review your feedback with them to clear up any confusion. Thanks again for bringing this to my attention.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Help Scout (Boston, MA) in Jul 2016
Interview
I applied online. Was later interviewed on appear.in. First round was 2 short interviews with a team leader and a developer. The team leader was nice and friendly. Asked mostly general questions about my background and qualifications. The developer asked me general simple screening questions about databases, Object Oriented design and Solr/Elastic Search.
Next had an interview with someone from the HR. Again simple questions about the salary and joining date. Was told that a project will be sent that I have to work on.
The project was actually bigger than what they described. They said it should take a day or two; however, the requirements were actually somewhat vague. They assumed that I already had experience in Solr or Elastic Search.
I completed the project and received a general email saying that my work doesn't align with their design and testing goals. They did mention some general negatives and positives in the mail, but they didn't discuss anything with me. Due to the vague nature of the requirements I had to assume a lot and didn't pay much attention to the end resulting code which seems was their main goal.
My advice is to deliver clean code with clean unit tests. Don't over abstract nor chose certain design decisions that has to be explained in person. Go for a simple clean design that satisfies the requirements.
One thing that caught my attention is that the developer kept over repeating that reviews for the project will be anonymous. I also noticed that no Asians nationalities were mentioned in the development teams favoring eastern Europeans countries.
Thank you for taking the time to leave a review on your interviews at Help Scout, and I apologize that your experience was less than stellar. I am always looking for ways we can improve our interview and project process. Your insight on the project size, specifications and time expectations is really helpful and we'll take that into consideration as we plan future hiring rounds.
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