Shout-out to companies with exceptional hiring process

In the past 3 years, I’ve completed 9 hiring processes. Most were like the usual ones for software engineering jobs. But a few were exceptional. These standout ones had a process that was friendly to candidates (I’ll explain more soon) which I immensely enjoyed. With this post, I want to appreciate the companies that chose a unique approach and are setting a good example.

What does “candidate friendly” mean?

By “candidate friendly” I mean:

• No leet code
• Interviewers interested in candidate and actively listening during interviews
• Interactive System Design where you are not left alone with the problem and interviewer just judges you
• Feedback during \ after interview is fast

Companies 

Below is a list (in alphabetical order) of companies I appreciate for their hiring process. All of them follow “candidate friendly” definition from above. For all of them I have applied for Staff+ Engineer roles. 

Doctolib

I interviewed with Doctolib for Senior Staff Eng this year. The whole interview process felt as if every person participating wanted me to succeed. Great example of this would be the coding interview task where I had to implement a feature that would pass a set of tests. With the task I received a cheatsheet of operations I will need but are often tricky to remember from the programming language’s API perspective(like date formatting). This way I could show my problem solving skills instead of spending time Googling details about parameters to the API. 

HelloFresh

What really makes the HelloFresh hiring process special is how short it is. For Staff Eng position it consists of only 3 interviews - Product, Engineering and Leadership interview (no coding interview). All of them conducted by professional and engaging interviewers.

Shopify

Shopify’s hiring process aligns perfectly with my hiring philosophy. They place significant emphasis on behavioral interviews and technical assessments that closely mirror everyday software engineering tasks. In both the coding interviews (there are two: an initial screening and a pair programming interview) and the system design interview I felt the task presented was just a way to initiate a discussion about software engineering practices and architecture rather than an objective I need to fulfill in order to get to the next stage.

Wolt

Similar to HelloFresh, the hiring process at Wolt is brief and involves three interviews (no coding interview). What makes it unique is that these interviews don’t follow the usual interview format. Instead, they feel like conversations among engineers. In my technical interview, the engineers who were conducting it not only posed questions but they also shared their own experiences. Occasionally, they’d even ask each other questions, resulting in engaging discussions that they would then involve me in to gather my perspective.