I applied in-person. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Zillow (Seattle, WA) in Oct 2015
Interview
Their process was fairly standard... 3 phone calls (30-60 minutes), followed by an on-site interview (4 hours).
The phone conversations were not very tech-intensive. Questions were focused on knowledge of general system concepts and development experiences. There were not many high-level questions about the platform, and no coding problems were involved. The recruiters/interviewers were all very nice and professional.
For the on-site portion of the process, I was flown in from across the country for an afternoon rapid-interviews with 5 different employees. The visit was on a Friday, and upon arriving, the first interviewer (recruiter) made it a point to tell me that I was 1 of the final 2 candidates, and a decision was going to be made by the following Monday afternoon. The remaining interviews were again very general, with the exception of code-writing session with one of their developers (which was very poorly done). Everything seemed to go very well, and the people were again very friendly.
I spent the weekend eagerly waiting for their decision to come on the following Monday (as I was clearly told), but the call never came. So I thought, hey, no big deal, these things always drag on longer than you expect. After waiting the rest of the week without a call/email, I tried reaching out via email to both of the contacts that I'd been communicating with throughout the interview process... Never heard from anyone at Zillow again (except for the very nice lady who took care of my travel reimbursements).
I understand that... sometimes you don't interview as well as you thought... sometimes you're told the same stuff as everyone else... sometimes you're not chosen for a job.
After reading many online stories of similar experiences, I still don't understand the interview experience I had with Zillow. I'm not a bitter person, but I can't deny the sourness this experience left me with (still - interview was 9 months ago, and I landed the same job elsewhere 2 weeks after it). In my opinion, leaving someone out to dry like that is simply cruel, and I'll never believe it to be unintentional/accidental.
Zillow, respect the people your business interacts with.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Write a trigger that populates an Account field (number) with its total number of related Contacts (context - Contact insert/update)
Hello and thank you for leaving a detailed review of your interview experience. I am so sorry to hear that you never got a follow up. We went back through and figured out who the recruiter was and it was right when this person was headed out on a leave. I am so sorry that we didn't transition your candidate status appropriately and please know that we shared this with the team! Feel free to reach out to me if you have anything else to share or any other information that would be helpful to us. Annie@zillow.com