I applied through university. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Zest AI (Los Angeles, CA) in Jan 2016
Interview
A brief phone interview where they inquire about your background and one question on data structures. You can use any language to code it.
There is a home-work that involves implementing a class with desired interface and methods. On-site interview starts with your presentation about your solution for the homework followed by several rounds of interviews. There is one round on business case study, one round of white board programming, one round of pair programming and another couple rounds on design and other stuff. The on-site interview takes almost an entire day. They move fast through the interview process.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Write a function that takes a list as input and outputs a list that has only the unique elements in the input list.
Phone call with recruiter which resulted into a tech screening with a manager. Not so bad but the next tech screening was probably one of worst interviews I’ve ever had.
Your given a coderpad URL and a chunk of code methods in Java or something and you have to start making functions that do XYZ based off those methods. Caveat being that you can’t actually run your code and the interviewer doesn’t really talk at all.
To top it off, it’s not even clear how many “stages” there were to this part. You keep building upon this thing until you more or less run out of time. Also, it’s not even a full time role! It’s contract to hire! Waste of time.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Make a stack without using any builtin functions.
What’s a linked list
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Zest AI (Los Angeles, CA) in Aug 2017
Interview
Three rounds in all: phone screen, video call and super day. All in all, I found it to be a very comprehensive and efficient interview process. The bulk of the process occurred when I was brought into the office for a super day - 6 interviews or so and lunch. They did a good job of testing your knowledge and way of thinking in different environments (take home vs. white board) and subject (algorithms vs. business analysis). The recruiter got back to me the same day with a decision.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Optimizations, algorithms, take home assignment (language agnostic), paired programming, data structures