I had three rounds of interviews, I felt like I got to know the team well and it gave me a good sense of what working with them would be like! The first interview was a call with two software engineers. We discussed my previous roles, and they asked some technical questions, such as how I would debug a slow page, what project I was proud of, and what I would change about it. The second round was a two-part interview. In the first part, I presented a project I’d worked on, followed by questions from the team. I showed a demo of the project, codebase walk through and presented slides on the project with code snippets, decisions I made and improvements. The second part involved a whiteboard system architecture discussion where I was asked to design Stack Overflow. I was most nervous about this section, but the team was helpful, providing prompts and suggestions when I was unsure in some areas. The final interview was with five senior team members, including the CEO, Head of Product, and Head of Engineering. This interview focused more on cultural fit, learning more about me, my motivations, and my connection to the company's values. Some questions were less work experience related than I’d expected, such as “Tell us what you were like at school”. This threw me off a little and this round was more intense than the others but still felt friendly and welcoming. Overall, I had a really positive experience and enjoyed having the interviews in person.

It was a three stage process: first stage was with members of the team to ask about me, my experience and ambitions; second stage was a two-hour technical presentation and discussion; third stage was with the CEO and other senior employees to check culture fit. The first stage was a straight forward chat, and then the second and third stages were quite challenging. The second stage involved presenting a coding project that I'd built, which involved a lot of preparation (I did have a project I'd been building - but I still took a few full days to make it presentable and add some extra features that displayed my skills). The second stage also involved a system design discussion, which was tricky to prepare for as it was a blind challenge. However, this was a great opportunity to show my skills, what I am like to work with and how I react to unforeseen challenges. The third stage was a discussion with Joe, the CEO, plus four other senior members of the company. They asked me more about my motivations, my background and my understanding of the company values. This was a nice chance to meet them and hear more about how I would fit into Zero Gravity, but it was quite intense speaking to so many people at once! I think this intensity is necessary though, because it's important that members of the team are aligned with the mission and values. Each stage had plenty of opportunity for me to ask questions and each time I received very thorough, honest answers. Overall, the process was challenging and at times intensive. But this didn't make it an unpleasant experience - far from it! I loved each stage and the opportunity to show my abilities and meet the team. The process was certainly far less 'blag-able' than other interviews I've encountered, which is great. I think it's important that the process is conducted this way, because it is a small company that clearly values the people within it, so making the wrong hiring decision could be costly in all sorts of ways.