Recently interviewed with Veeva Systems for their Consulting Development Program. The first step was interviewing with a general introductory interview. Pretty simple getting to know you and understanding how the company works. Nothing crazy. The next step was the candidate exercise that everyone is talking about. You do spend a lot of time on it and the thing that bothers me about it was although the exercise was on the easier side, there was really no direction for it. Everything was on you to teach yourself, know where to start, decide when you’re finished, etc. the prompt specifically states “don’t worry about having the right answer, but be creative”. I made a solution that was correct, but they rejected me because they said they “wanted more”. I solved all the customer needs, but they said I needed to do more. I personally felt I did well in presenting my solution and answering questions, but ultimately if you don’t teach yourself the software properly then you’re not going to get the position. A company should be able to spend time to help teach a software even if there’s some parts falling short. Overall, nice people that I met, but the candidate exercise really is going to be a waste of time if you don’t find a solution THEY’RE looking for. You can be correct, present everything well, solve all the customer needs, and spend 30+ hours on it and still be rejected because the solution you made isn’t what they wanted.