For me, the whole process took around three months, but I wasn't in a rush and neither were they. I don't expect that it would be this slow for others.
The interview process consisted of a few steps:
- initial screening call with their HR partner - very informative and I was given a lot of detailed information about the company and about the interview process
- interview with my future manager - again, a very informative interview, where the manager got to know me and I got to know more about the structure of the dev teams and their tech stack
- technical test - I put less effort than I initially planned to in this, but I made sure to write in the readme file of the project or in comments what I would do differently if I spent more time on it or if this was an application that would go into production. I did, however, make sure to showcase the fact that I have a solid base in the back-end framework by writing clean good code. I wasn't given a hard deadline, and after two weeks I was contacted with a reminder that they have a couple of candidates in the running and if I am still interested in the job, they encouraged me to submit my code as soon as I can. I took a couple of hours in a weekend to write it.
- interview with two senior developers - this was what sealed it. The two devs were very reasonable, they understood my intentions with the code, they appreciated my comments about things I would've done differently, but they also discussed them, giving me the opportunity to bring up more of my experience. They freely shared ideas with me and when they brought up something I wasn't familiar with, they explained it and the interview itself was a learning experience, which is amazing. I would say this interview was the best I had in my career.
- personality test - I was worried about this one, as I only took one before, which I didn't like. This test asked reasonable questions and it doesn't feel intrusive. As part of this, I took a few ability tests. I tanked one of them (probably the easiest one), because I didn't pay attention to the initial instructions and during the trial questions, I was getting all of the answers wrong, with no way of going back to read the instructions. I emailed the HR partner about it after I completed all the tests and she understood, so it didn't affect my application.
After I was offered the job, I read the contract and it's the longest employment contract that I've had to read. Some of the language in the contract and some clauses put me off, so I decided to not accept the job offer, telling them why I am not accepting. But Helena asked to have a chat before I make the decision and following our chat where she put my mind at ease and explained the reasoning for the clauses, I did accept the offer.
