I applied online. I interviewed at IXL Learning (San Mateo, CA) in Aug 2017
Interview
IXL's interviews started out with a phone screen interview with a project manager. The questions were quite general. We spoke about my work, why I want to work for them. The project manager even gave me a brief overview about the team that I am interviewing for and what they do. After the phone screen interview, I had a very unique design challenge that was based around what the team does on a day to day basis. This took about a week for me to complete. Once I submitted the design challenge, I received a callback from another project manager where I spoke about my design and the design decisions I made. The project manager also asked how the design would be altered for certain edge cases. My recruiter at IXL called me in a few days to ask me a few more general questions regarding my current location, my career goals and why I want to work at IXL and then, she told me I got through to the onsite interviews. There were four onsite interviews - two with project managers, one with an engineer to test how designers work with engineers and another with a curriculum designer. The onsite interviews also involved two mini design challenges and a brainteaser. These challenges tested your thought process and lucidity. There was also an informal lunch with members of the team. While I thought I performed well, I did not get a final offer from them. It's not possible to gain feedback as well because this is against company policy.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
There was no question that was difficult. They were straightforward. Just be humble yet passionate and don't come off too strong. They like simple, mellow people.
Average experience with a recruiter. Got an email from the recruiter and set up a call. Talked about personal experiences and a brief portfolio review. Also some general questions about why you applied for this position and gave an intro about the company.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Why did you apply for this job and how did you find us?
I applied online. I interviewed at IXL Learning (San Mateo, CA) in May 2017
Interview
I applied online and a recruiter reached out to me for an initial phone screen. Following that, I had a phone screen with a product manager. It was very a very general conversation about my background and experience and the interviewer seemed distracted during the call. Almost as if mandatory, she cut me short while I explaining my project and asked me the brain teaser. Since I had read glassdoor reviews before, I was prepared. I didn't think it was a good conversation, but I cleared it any way.
Next I was given a design challenge with an example from their website and asked to critique the design and suggest improvements. I spent about 8-10 hours on that challenge because I really wanted to work with IXL and the education domain specially interests me a lot. About a week after submitting the challenge, the recruiter called to setup a follow-up interview about the design exercise.
So next I spoke with another product manager about my design exercise and some general questions about design and past experience. That conversation went very well and I talked about my passion for education. Almost 3 weeks after that I heard back from the recruiter that I have been called onsite.
Onsite, I interviewed with 4 people from their team - a mix of product managers and engineers and they took me out to lunch. Due to the NDA I cannot disclose the questions I was asked but there was a brain teaser as expected. Also one of the interviews with the engineer was quite technical although I tried my best to be in sync with him, there was a clear communication gap between us. Now, I've worked as a software engineer in the past and I understand code, but that interaction was a big ball of miscommunication. I couldn't understand till the end what he wanted and I've never had such an experience communicating with engineers before, either as an engineer or a designer.
As a designer it's critical that you communicate well with the engineering and product management folks. My interaction there made me feel like the engineers there didn't have a lot of experience communicating with designers (or maybe it was just him).
My overall experience with IXL was neutral. The recruiter was responsive, but they took TOO long for the entire process, which makes me feel like they're hiring yeararound. The onsite experience was mostly good, except for the one interview.
