I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Stepful in Aug 2023
Interview
1. initial phone screen with recruiter 2. phone screen with founder 3. take home full stack assignment 4. review of take home assignment 5. architecture review (this was canceled) the night before a morning interview, the google calendar event was unexpectedly canceled without any further communication. I sent multiple emails to my various interviewers asking if this was in error, or an attempt to reschedule. Never heard from them again. days later I receive an apology from the recruiter, saying he was supposed to tell me that they no longer wanted to proceed , and he didn't relay that message in a timely manner. I am more annoyed with the actual interviewers, who had multiple opportunities to clarify and chose not to. in summary: ghosted during the interview process in a highly unprofessional manner.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
(take home): design a fullstack web app where students can book time on coach's calendar.
Call with a recruiter covering past projects, product thinking, and expectations, followed by a technical screen to debug and add features to your preferred tech stack. Overall, it felt like a standard straightforward interview process.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Assessment that involves working through a browser based IDE and fixing and updating the post /api/documents endpoint so documents could be created successfully using json input and returned a proper response. This required debugging and fixing controller strong params handling. Also on editing and persistence, making sure update parameter keys were formatted correctly and that changes made via PUT /api/documents/:id were saved to the database and reflected after page reloads. Also to Implement document sharing via email, which involved a post /api/documents/:id/share endpoint and verifying that shared users had appropriate view or edit access through get /api/documents/:id/view.
I applied through a staffing agency. I interviewed at Stepful
Interview
They have a take home assignment which they warn to do quality over quantity. They list a ton of requirements in which I only did half, and even that was too much. They want it to be production ready, so really only a few endpoints is necessary. Huge waste of time interviewing here.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Take home exam, asking about design and production readiness
I applied through other source. I interviewed at Stepful
Interview
Intro call with recruiter, create crud app from scratch. I pushed back on the crud app because ALL of the other companies im interviewing with don't require me to create a full app. I'm not sure if they just wanted to see candidates use cursor or AI tools unspokenly or what. But, still unreasonable.
I've heard companies that ask this of candidates steal UI/UX design ideas and then just reject them. Don't interview with this company. Preys on desperate candidates to steal ideas and/or waste their time.