Interviewing
Our talent pipeline is an organizational moat. This guide walks you through our interview process.
Process
We adopt a self-service interview process.
- Application: Candidates apply through our careers page . We use a combination of AI and human review to shortlist candidates.
- Initial Screening: Shortlisted candidates are invited to a 30-minute initial screening, usually with a HR representative.
- Interviews: Candidates go through 2 to 3 rounds of interviews with different team members. Each interview is approximately 30 to 45 minutes long.
- Founder interview: The final interview is with the co-founders, that will last approximately 30 minutes.
- Deliberation: Candidates are evaluated based on feedback from the interviews as well as their portfolio. We aim to make a decision within 1 week.
We take a data-driven approach, and each open role is tracked in our automated tracking system. The data is used to improve our hiring process.
Historically, our acceptance rate has been less than 1% of all applications. For direct referrals, this rate is higher at >10%.
Preparing Our Interviewers
To improve the effectiveness of the interview process, we actively support our team members in stepping up as hiring managers. Any team member that is keen to participate in the interview process is encouraged to follow these steps:
- Indicate your interest in being part of the interview process to a HR representative.
- Shadow existing interviews to understand the company’s hiring process.
- Create a Google Appointments link to allow candidates to schedule interviews with you. Make sure a default Google Hangsout link is set, and this is shared with HR.
- New candidates will schedule interviews with you using your Google Appointments link.
- If you have an upcoming interview scheduled, review the candidate’s resume and prepare thoughtful questions.
- Input detailed feedback on the candidates in our automated tracking system (BambooHR) after each interview.
Evaluation
We do not use a scoring system for candidates; instead we prefer to encourage natural conversation.
However interviewers who like to use an evaluation template can consider the following:
| Criteria | Description | Response | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Technical Skills | Proficiency in relevant technical areas (e.g. AI, robotics, programming) | ||
| Fundamentals | Understanding of core concepts in the candidate’s field of expertise (e.g. statistics, mathematics, machine learning, physics) | ||
| Problem-Solving Ability | Ability to approach and solve complex problems | ||
| Communication Skills | Clarity and effectiveness in communication | ||
| Cultural Fit | Alignment with company culture and values | ||
| Overall Impression | Holistic evaluation of the candidate’s suitability for the role applied |