I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Tails.com (Richmond, London, England) in Aug 2019
Interview
First was Phone interview with hiring manager, then onsite with a number of team members, and last with the co-founder of the company. The questions were authentic, well prepared and effective. Everyone was very friendly and accommodating throughout the process.
I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Tails.com (Richmond, London, England) in Mar 2019
Interview
The interview process was one of the most involved processes I've seen, and in a good way. After a 30-40 minute phone chat with the Head of Engineering, I was invited to their offices in Richmond for an in-person interview. This lasted about 2.5 hours, with 3 different interview sessions in a row comprising of 2 people from a team (1 senior, 1 junior) talking to me about the role and my experiences. Was a very engaging process, as I met people from various engineering teams on the first day, culminating with a 1 on 1 with the Head of Engineering. Was a great opportunity to talk not only about my role at the company but also about the company itself, with so many different employees from different sections of the engineering team.
Afterwards, the Head of Engineering sent me a message declining my initial application, due to a lack of experience as a lead, which was a perfectly fair conclusion given my career is still fairly young. However, most likely due to the thorough nature of the 2.5 hour interview process, he was willing to create a job posting that I would fit and continue the interview process. Of course I accepted, and was treated to another day of a similar interview process, except this time with members of the non-tech teams such as Data Analytics and Project Managers. Interview questions ranged from technical implementations (how I'd go about implementing QA processes into Tails' existing architecture) to simply chatting about dogs.
At the end of the day, whilst I didn't fit the requirements totally, Tails.com clearly judges applicants as people and not walking CVs, and I was offered a position at the company. It was very refreshing to have such an engaging interview, where the process felt less about ticking off arbitrary checklist boxes but more about forming a mutual understanding between potential employee and employer.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given your understanding of the core parts of our systems, where would you implement QA?
What a story, thank you so much for sharing.
Life at tails.com isn’t always so predictable and this is a good example of how we do our best to create a great interviewing experience and find the right people.
Henrik Malmquist
Head of People, tails.com
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