I voluntarily sent my CV and Cover Letter to the London HR department. They had had a few events on my campus and I was growing more and more curious about this company. Very welcoming touchpoint from the beginning, letting me know that the paperwork had been received and that process could begin shortly.
- 1st round: phone interview with a technical analyst / engineer from the London office. Again a very warm point of contact, no unhealthy pressure, no unnecessary tricks. Just a genuine get-to-know conversation and assessment of my motivations, as most 1st interviews are or should be. This interview was more about my understanding of Medallia, my motivation to work for a tech company and my interest in technology in general. A fair amount of the conversation was based on my questions about their product / CEM platform.
- 2nd round: take-home challenge, 48 hours to complete, which is more than enough. This challenge is twofold: 1) Explain into words a computer functionality, just like you would explain to a computer engineer a functionality you want built, without a comp. science background. 2) Excel statistical challenge. The data can get substantial, so the key is to find efficient ways to quickly dice, slice and use the data you need for your calculations.
I think this way to test candidates is rather smart and fair: there can be no "bad day, bad time" excuse on a 48hrs challenge. Unlike a lot of interviews where a poor performance on the spot may not actually reflect the actual quality of a candidate, a 48hrs challenge clearly allows the applicant to express his knowledge, skills, logic and common sense without external pressure. The counterpart is the requirement to be thorough, structured and efficient.
I also had a phone call
- 3rd and last round: 3 on-site interviews - 1 functional (about Medallia, your CV, your interest in tech), 1 technical (mix of business acumen and technical knowledge and good sens - pure Medallia type of task), 1 cultural (fit of personality). I really liked the way these interviews went, for different reasons.
First, they were extremely thorough and did not leave many things unquestioned. A candidate is applying for a position, for a company but also for a team to work with... and Medallia makes sure that there is a good fit. The margin of error of appreciation / bias seems extremely narrow. Not a lot to prepare, I think the key is to be natural and therefore naturally fit their standards for communication, skills, curiosity etc...
Second, there is a fine line between properly testing a candidate (both fit and skills) and setting unhealthy pressure/discomfort during a interview, and Medallia always stays on the right side of it. They do not see successful candidates as "survivors of a tough recruiting process" but more as candidates who slowly but surely showed their interest, smartness, skills and curiosity to learn and improve.
Very happy to work there now
Cons: rather slow process and I often had to contact them to know whether or not I got to the next round. Definitely worth it and to be fair, I had to do the same for many firms. A lot of them just have too many candidates for the resources they hold to timely process everything.