They called about 6 people for a open day to their office in Rickmansworth.
First they gave some introduction about the company and work.
HR asked us to introduce ourselves.
Then they gave us a individual task which is a scenario like I went on a trip to place near Rio Brazil with some group of friends. From there we decide to visit a friend in near by village by flight. The flight crashes about 10 miles away from Amazon river. There are few things listed and we have give them priority as to what will help us survive through that ordeal.
First they asked us prioritise them individually and then discuss in group of 3 and finally all 6 should discuss and come up with a final list.
They told us what the correct list is as per experts and gave us a score. They said our total group score was better than our 3 member group score. Moral of the story by collaborating we can do a better job :) . I guess everybody knows it doesn't have to make us understand by a group exercise.
First I thought ok they are trying something new.
Then a small meeting with HR individually just simple questions like why we should hire you?
why vocalink? etc and salary expectations. This was followed by lunch which they arranged.
They showed us around their office. Office has nice views all around.
After lunch we had a technical exercise. I was hoping that at least this would be done individually.
But , no to my surprise they gave laptop to each of us and again was a group exercise.
One of their managers I suppose acted as a product owner and gave us a user story to develop a api to authenticate a user. The user story itself is not difficult but doing it as a group that is the difficult part. Group of 6 people who met that day coming to a conclusion and finishing it in a 1 hour 15 minutes and presenting to product owner not happening. They had created a git repository for the code to be checked in . Not all members had experience with git which was another challenge.
At the end we could get only one laptop working with git and all of us had to help that one person.
We didn't finish the task .
They initially said they will give us their feedback the same day but then they said next day.
Till now I haven't heard from them. Its been like 2 or 3 weeks since I attended that interview and still I keep getting calls for Vocalink and I tell them I have already been there, I think they should seriously reconsider their interview process. I really don't know on what basis they want to hire someone.