Applied online on JobVite job board and got a call from a recruiter a week or so later. She set up a one hour phone interview with one of the guys on the Engineering team, adding that I should have a computer ready with internet connection, since it would be a technical screen. On the day of the interview, the guy called 10 minutes late and the call actually went on for ~45 minutes. In the beginning, he explained to me in brief about what their company is all about and their work in the beauty industry, and also the technologies they use for development and then asked me to introduce myself and my background. Then, he sent me an invitation to view and edit a Google Docs document which had the problem statement for a database manipulation problem in which records had to be added/deleted, making use of transactional memory management. Though I was not familiar with either databases or transactional memory management, I was able to understand what functionality he wanted me to implement and was able to code the same using object-oriented JavaScript. From the way it went, I thought that I will at least make it to the next round, but I got a generic reject email from the recruiter three days later, saying my background and skill set was not a good fit for what they were looking for to fill this position (God only knows what they expected and why they didn't feel this way before giving me a call!), and was pretty disappointed.

I applied on ipsy's website and was contacted by a recruiter about my skills. Because I have a mixed background of design and some development she wanted to be clear on what my focus was. I told her I was interested in more development and was working toward my goal of learning more engineering. This triggered a positive response and I was set up with a technical phone interview a week later. The day of the call I spoke to someone on the engineering team. The call started out with them speaking about ipsy: it's history, how they started, and where they're headed; as well as the engineering team and the roles they do. After the brief introduction we headed straight into the coding problem. The question seemed difficult due to my limited knowledge of algorithms. I expressed this and said I would try to iterate and work my way through the problem to the best of my knowledge. The interviewer seemed annoyed or impatient during my hiccups (even sighing out loud at times). I was able to, however, talk through my thought process and of what I expected to be happening (with help at times) and this seemed to go towards the right track. However, once it came time to write code I was told I cannot write pseudo code and to just use the preferred language. Realizing my limited knowledge in JS the interviewer decided to end the call 30 mins early and asked me something along the lines of, "Why did you apply to this position if you don't even have the skill set?" That seemed a bit rude and unprofessional to which I replied about the other points of interest to me in the listing (HTML, CSS/SASS/LESS, responsive/mobile development and design, working with designers, etc) -- all of which I felt were reasonable enough to apply for an interview there. But yeah, I GUESS I shouldn't have applied, right? I should've known all along! Again, pretty much the interviewer said along the lines of, "I don't work with those so I don't know what questions to ask." Even motioning that there was a mixup with the recruiter and myself. Why in the first place would you not even ask other relevant front-end questions let alone not even allow the notion of pseudo code and also make a comment that is so unprofessional that mentions this whole process was a mistake. Also, I didn't even get a chance to ask questions; even if the whole process didn't go too well (hey, I still want to learn more about the team/company). I would like to point out to ipsy (and I hope they read feedback) that it shouldn't matter who they are interviewing - whether they are seasoned professional, a 10x engineer, someone out of college, a beginner, or whatever - your interviewers should not openly show frustration or make inappropriate comments to your candidates. Not only does it discourage them and make them feel awful, it reflects badly on your company. And I see from other interviewees that this is not a single case either. Despite being a fan of ipsy/Michelle Phan (which is another reason why I applied) overall it was a negative experience and I felt that my interviewer was not empathetic at all.