Twilio interview questions

A recruiter, Jess reached out to me. She really empowered me to go after this EA role and provided great insight to what that role would entail and how someone would thrive in that position. She also made me feel like a priority and was supportive throughout each step of the process. She went above and beyond to ensure all my questions were answered and was very prompt with any need that came up.

If interviewing is like dating someone and getting hired is like getting married, I feel like I've just been on a bunch of great dates with someone I was really getting into only to find out at the last moment on the last date that she a serious, deal-breaking mental disorder. That's how I feel about anyone who will say "I shouldn't have to tell you, you should just know". I've heard that from girlfriends, but never from a company during an interview process. I applied to be a trainer in San Francisco and was contacted by their in-house recruiter. I then went on to talk with the team manager, the director, a current technical trainer, and an SME. I also spoke with someone who did not seem to be a part of the team, but interviewed everyone to make sure they were in-line with the companies Values (Read that list of values, if you want to succeed in interviewing here). ALL of these conversations went extremely well. I had other companies I was interviewing with, but this was the one I was really into and felt would be the best match for me. The last step was a Demo Teach. I've been a trainer long enough to know to expect this and was fully set to do it. When another company made me an offer, Twilio insisted that they wanted to have a chance to make a competitive offer and my time to prepare for the demo teach was shortened. Here's where things started to go wrong. When I gave the demo teach, they seemed wholly disappointed by what I presented. When I told them what I had been told to prepare, we discovered there was a major disconnect in what was communicated to me and their actual expectations. So, we decided to have another Demo Teach in 24 hours, giving me time to meet the updated criteria. I updated and presented it again. At the second presentation, they seemed satisfied with the grasp I had of what I was told to review and prep for. What they didn't like was how little I knew about things I was not told to review or prepared to answer questions on. Let's be clear: I'm interviewing to be a technical trainer and I was giving a sample training on technology, which I had no experience with prior. So, I spent my time learning the tech and preparing a lesson to train the tech to others. What Twilio wanted me to do, however, was to also look up Twilio's competitors and how they compare, and how their tech is better than other tech options. They said I could have found this information out if I read through their website to find it. This may be true, but I don't know why a tech trainer who is preparing to train tech would pause his tech training to then study marketing, ESPECIALLY if he had not been told that was part of the evaluation. In 20 years of industry experience and dozens of interviews, I have never had an incident where a company explicitly, openly, and proudly evaluated me on information that was not obviously a part of my job and was not told to study up on. In other words, they basically said to me "We shouldn't have to tell you to study everything on our website, including the stuff that has no obvious connection to the subject matter or your position, you should know to do that." And I should have done that with less than half the time I was originally allocated. So, I got the feedback that I was not hired because I did not know this information I was not told was important to know. Personally, after that interview was over and I had that feeling of being told "I shouldn't have to tell you...", I had a very bad taste in my mouth and was ready to move on. One more thing along a related track, I was told the interview with the director would involve a critique of a certain page on their website. I read that page and prepped to give that critique, but it never came. The director asked me a number of questions, none of them linked back to any part of the site. So, here I had the feeling of being told something was critically important that wasn't. I guess that would be "It shouldn't matter that I told you it was important, you should just know it wasn't." If you can read minds or tell the future, this is a great company to interview with. If you're sane and human, maybe not so much.