I interviewed at Qualtrics couple of days back.
I applied through LinkedIn. The recruiter send me an email and scheduled a time to chat.
The HR call lasted for about an hour, he asked behavioral questions.
Tell me about yourself, What are you passionate about? What do you enjoy doing?
What’s prompting you to talk to us today?
Current compensation?
What do you own/responsible for currently?
How would you deal with a difficult colleague?
Tell me about the top 2-3 achievements you are proud of?
Tell me about a time when management made a decision you didn’t agree with, how did you react?
Tell me about a time when you could have done something differently for a better result in your career.
Any mistakes to speak of?
After going through all these, HR send me questions and ask me to record my response.
I though he was asking me to do his job, but when you are hoping to get an offer you don’t mind doing HR’s job do you?
After the HR telephonic round, I got a response and they asked me available time slots for first telephonic round.
They offered me an option of onsite first round, I choose it.
The first telephonic round:
The manager took the interview, the interviewer was very cooperative, considerate and friendly.
All the people at Qualtrics are from Amazon so they follow amazon’s model.
All the time interviewer was taking nodes of what I was talking, coding question answer.
The technical question was easy.
Along with technical question he also asked me test cases for one scenario.
Some behavioral question like why Qualtrics ? culture , some previous experience questions.
I got positive feedback and they scheduled another loop of interview.
The coordinator send me interview details.
Interview day:
Out of four 2 interviewers were changed without notifying me.
Interview one : I think this was the bar raiser interview for me. He was not aware he has to interview me.
He asked me some typical questions: Why Qualtrics and tell me about yourself.
He explained me one test scenario, and asked me to write test cases.
I started with writing categories for test cases. Then continued telling him test cases for each category and adding some more categories. After 20 min he started asking me write whatever you are saying. After other interviews I realized that they need to record the interview, telling test cases was not helping him to fill his interview report. No coding question.
I think because of this interview I did not received an offer.
Interview 2:
They changed the interviewer for this round. Same format they introduce themselves. Ask me technical question. The technical question was very easy. I wrote the code in 15-20 min. Dry run the code for couple of different inputs, made some changes for invalid inputs.
After that, they asked me test cases for different products. They choose not to ask me test cases for the program I wrote.
For 30-40 minutes I was telling test cases, different test scenarios.
At the end, 4-5 min for me to ask them the questions.
I used this time to know more about the company, the culture, what they like about Qualtrics.
Interview 3:
This guy was the part of testing team. The technical problem was very easy, solved it within 15-20 min. Rest of the time spend on test cases.
This person asked some behavioral questions, asked what you will do in this case etc.
I used opportunity to know more about the team, about the growth.
I asked him how much time they spend doing manual testing vs writing automation tool.
My impression is that they do more manual testing than automation.
Interview 4:
The same as 2 and 3. Evan every interviewer was telling the same client success story. You even don’t have another interesting story to tell? But when you are doing well you don’t want to screw the things my showing you are bored. right?
At the end recruiter coordinator told me I will know about the outcome by mid-week.
I was hoping for an offer, because except the first one I think I performed very well.
I waited for response, they never came back, so I followed up with them.
I got response Unfortunately, we are not moving forward. The reason was the technical bar wasn't met.
Which technical bar are you talking about? They asked me very easy/basic coding question like reverse the string.
There was not a single coding question I was unable to solve, code or unit test. Evan during the interview I was thinking I unnecessary prepared for this interview.
I don’t think they tested my technical abilities during those four hours rather they don’t have people or process to test person’s technical skills.
Most interviewers are new to interviewing other people. If their decision is not a team decision I don’t understand why they conducted 4 interviews. They don’t value your time I guess.
Advice to people who are trying testing roles at Qualtrics prepare for writing test cases.