The Interview has 5 rounds (not 4) + additional take home challenge. Also, after interviews 4 to 5 references are required.
The first round was hiring related, second one was product related, third one part 1 was engineering and part 2 was again product related with submitted take home challenge review, fourth one was with CEO, fifth was with VP.
The interview revealed that the role’s scope lacked clarity and it contained irrelevant responsibilities; The job description contained manual QA Engineer’s responsibilities (not Analyst’s) and at the interview the role’s responsibilities expanded to handling automation like an SDET. There was no clarity over programming language or the tools. Besides QA, they looked for someone who will also work as a data entry clerk for archived files. So, one role with three different responsibilities.
The whole interview process took exact 1 month, which was surprisingly fast and felt like there were no other interviews going on. After each step, the next day there was a response and moved to scheduling a time for the next round.
The final round VP asks generic questions and expects concrete answers. However, when I asked some questions, I could not get clear or concrete answers. The main point of this round was salary; candidate is expected to give an exact number and not to negotiate later after receiving offer.
Contrary to the tech industry, where traditionally it is very common and normal to negotiate salary after offer, the interview has revealed that negotiation was not allowed and there was no room for flexibility.
At the end of interviews, minimum 4 references were requested. All contact details were given but it failed due to their poor communication efforts, and the link in their emails expired. The HR and VP communicate did not provide any phone number to reach out but used dynamic (non-company authentic) email addresses via third party domain.
1 week of silence and I asked for an update, and I received an automated template email saying: “WE WOULD LIKE TO EXTEND YOU our GRATITUDE for the time you spent with our team”…
It was a quite experience that it could be compared to Cirque Du Soleil.
I found the whole process very inefficient, lacking professionalism, energy and time wasting. Despite this was the very first QA role and it has been a while that this interview ended. Since then, there is still no one there handling QA.