I handed my resume to a recruiter at my university’s career fair. The recruiter then reached out by email asking to schedule a 30 minute conversation about the product support role. During the call, he said that my teaching assistant experience, technical background, and strong desire to help people were reasons he thought I would be a good fit for this role. He asked me some questions about my experiences, and I got to ask him about Palantir.
The technical phone interview was scheduled about a week later. The interviewer was roleplaying as a customer who was using a Palantir product and couldn’t log into it. I had to describe what kinds of questions I would ask and to who, and the interviewer would respond as the IT team, coworker, etc.. Eventually, I found that the customer’s computer had a slightly different configuration that was causing the issue. I got to ask him a few questions about his experiences at Palantir. He said the average age of people there is 25, with 35 being on the older side and thinks of work as family at times. If they have spare time (this is rare especially when you’re first starting out), people can take on side projects that benefit the company. Deadlines can be very stressful to meet.
In about 3 hours after concluding the phone interview, my recruiter calls me and tells me that I have advanced to the onsite interview. He spoke excitedly about my performance on the phone screen, offering specific details about my past experiences and praising my clear thought process during the technical question. He asked me for my availability to fly to Washington D.C. for their interview event, where the entire team will be there interviewing lots of people at once. He urged me to let him know asap if I couldn’t make it since slots were limited. I was very busy with school, so flying from California to D.C. would be a very difficult trip amidst classes and midterms. I emailed him saying so, and asked if I could interview in their Palo Alto office instead. After several back and forths of his asking if a different day would work or I could make it to New York on a different week, I was scheduled to fly out to Palo Alto. They said I would eventually need to fly to D.C. to speak to the head hiring manager, but they would work with me if I reached this step.
My onsite was 3-4 hours long and I finished at around 12pm. I presented my ID to the receptionist on the first floor, and after some confusion about who I was “here to see,” I signed in on an iPad under my recruiter’s name and signed an NDA. About a week later, my recruiter calls me to let me know that the team has decided to move forward with other candidates.
