Interview #1 - Technical interview - Via Microsoft Teams
Interview with Chapter Lead and another Technical Consultant.
Fairly chill, talked through some of my previous work, one practical question.
Was happy with the way things went, I heard back via the recruiter that they were also happy, however for whatever reason they decided that I might not be quite 'Technical Consultant' material but would consider me for a 'Software Consultant' role.
Interview #2 - Technical Interview - Via Microsoft Teams
Interview with two senior engineers.
Interview was one of the worst I've done, lots of very specific questions regarding my knowledge of specific jargon, no real attempt to gauge my problem solving ability. Several times the questioner would reiterate a very specific question again over and over unhappy with the answer but not providing any guidance on what was not satisfactory in my answer.
Afterwards, I was told by the recruiter that they were very happy and would like to move forward, the next stage being reference checks and offer.
I was taken aback by this, maybe my assessment of the interview was wrong, but I felt it had gone very poorly.
I was also surprised to hear that there would be no cultural fit interview, especially for what was described to me as a lead role, mentoring more junior engineers.
After sharing my feedback with them, the recruiter told me that they would consider a bump in salary to make up for any concerns I had. Yellow Flag.
I sent some follow up questions to the recruiter about the team dynamics and culture. Things like their thoughts on blameless postmortems, psychological safety, continuous learning and professional development, work-life balance and expectations for out-of-hours work.
I felt like they had failed to evaluate my people skills, and this concerned me about the culture of the rest of the team and others that had been through this process.
I was contacted a few days later by the recruiter to say that ASB "don't think this is the place for me" and were not interested in discussing anything further.
I think I dodged a bullet here. I recommend caution if you are considering working here.