The best interview experience I have ever had! The process was fair and prompt and the people were competent and kind! There weren't any trick questions, instead I felt like everyone tried to help me prove my ability. If you are thinking about applying for a job and don't need all the detail feel free to stop reading now and send your cv in 🙂
There was a 3 stage interview process - an initial informal phone call with Andrew (HR), a 30 minute technical screening and a final 3.5 hour technical interview. It was all conducted remotely - government advice at the time was to work from home. The interview process was very prompt took just over a week (it would have been quicker, but for my availability). They got in touch 1 business day after the final interview to say they'd like to make me an offer and I had an offer letter by the end of the next day.
At each stage of the process the people I spoke to came across as highly competent and were engaging and thoughtful. I had been in my previous role for over a decade, so it had been a long time since I'd gone through an interview process and I was a ball of nerves!
The initial informal chat with Andrew was to get some further detail on my experience and what I was looking for and to give me some information on the role, the department structure and way of working and the company culture. Andrew was a whirlwind of positivity and I found it impossible to be nervous talking to him. He was very efficient, kept in touch throughout the process and his genuine enthusiasm for Instanda was infectious. He checked in at each stage of the interview process to see how I felt it had gone, and to provide Instanda feedback, and was always encouraging!
The 30 minute technical screening was a run through of some basic tech questions with a Dev Lead spanning C#, HTML, Javascript e.g. what is the difference between a div and a span and to give you an opportunity to ask any questions. The interviewer (much to his credit) started with some informal chat which instantly put me at ease. I certainly didn't answer all of the questions correctly or as well as I should have! Some of this was due to nerves and some because I didn't have experience of the full technical stack. The interviewer coached me through some of the answers, measuring ability as well as knowledge.
The final 3.5 hour technical test was with a Dev Lead and an Architect and included being given an ASP.NET MVC5 project and asked to complete a specific task. The interview was conducted using Microsoft Teams and Teamviewer so the interviewers could see what you were doing, though they dropped out of the Teams call at various points to give me time to work. Using the internet was not allowed, which initially terrified me, but as I was not creating a project from scratch it was ok. As an experienced C# developer with limited web experience, I was pleased to successfully complete the task, though I did need extra time and the interviewers helped me fix some errors in the code. By the end of the coding test I felt like I couldn't have added 2 and 2 and got 4, but I relaxed as the conversation moved on to subjects I was more confident of e.g. my past development work. It can be very nerve wracking to be interviewed, especially while doing a technical test and knowing your interviewers can see every key stroke. I do hope they weren't watching too closely - there were definite moments of panic! Both interviewers were patient and thoughtful throughout and very considerate.
I wasn't certain they would make me an offer as my technical knowledge wasn't a 100% match, but they did, and I am grateful and glad that they did! The impression I formed of the company during the interview process has only been reinforced since I started my new role. So far no alarm bells have rung and I've stopped thinking they might! My advice - make the leap!
