I applied through a recruiter. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Quanttus (Cambridge, MA) in Jun 2014
Interview
1 - Evaluation by recruiter
2 - Hiring manager phone interview
3 - In person interview - Develop a interview presentation - 2 hours broken into 1 hour sets. 1st set with group of people on the cultural fit of the person. 2nd set with a group of people on the technical fit of the position.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How would you react to situation x?
How do you feel about interacting with senior level executives?
If you could have a super power, what would it be?
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Quanttus (Cambridge, MA)
Interview
I was contacted by the recruiter through LinkedIn. Did 1 phone interview with her, I had to describe my past experiences, it went well and I was scheduled for a second interview with the hiring manager. This second interview was not difficult, the hiring manager asked precise questions on how would I do this or that, you have to prepare this kind of questions obviously. I was then scheduled for an in-person interview: two 1-hour interviews, one "Fit Interview" and one "Technical Interview".
For the fit interview I had to prepare a few slides on my skills, this is a support for the discussion. Recruiter + 3-4 people picked up within the company. This interview went well, lots of questions on past experiences and how I handled specific situations.
Everything was good until the tech interview. I was interviewing for a position to help build the QA organization and write tests, but I did the tech interview with people who had what seemed to be few knowledge in software QA. Additionally, I'm not sure they knew for what exact position I was applying and there might have been a confusion with Software QA Engineer (a more tech-oriented position). They were 3 and spent the whole time looking at their Mac, having 0 feedback in real time was complicated. Questions were really basic to my opinion and they kept asking the same although I answered: "did you already write test cases?" "how do you do?" "how do you write them"? We didn't really discuss more difficult questions like: team organization, how to build a strong QA process or ensure product quality. Overall impression on the tech interview was that people didn't really care about my answers and that they didn't really know what they wanted.
After this interview the recruiter ensured me that she was going to contact me the very next day to debrief. Next day I had no news, and the following THREE WEEKS either, despite 2 emails and 2 messages on her voicemail. After 3 weeks, I reached out to another recruiter who answered with a 3-line e-mail, explaining that they rejected my application, and giving me a basic explanation that wasn't related to the position. This confirmed my doubts on the confusion about the position I was applying to.
This left the impression of a very busy (or dis-organized?) young startup, recruiters obviously have a lot to deal with at this time but lack the basic respect of giving a feedback to final candidates.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Unexpected question: if a storm is going to destroy your house and you can save one unique object, what would it be?
I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Quanttus (Cambridge, MA)
Interview
Initial contact was quick. They scheduled an phone screen for a time when the employee was on vacation. Second try went ok, in-person interview was 2 panels, one on "tech" and one on "fit" and required a brief slideshow about yourself (with very minimal guidance on what it should contain). Follow-up after interview was also quick. What followed was lots of confusion about what position I had applied for vs what was being offered, whether they did or did not want to hire me, different answers and different signals depending on who I talked to, then a few weeks of silence. When I followed up to tell them I had another offer they wished me luck.