I applied online. I interviewed at LightBeam.ai (New Delhi) in Aug 2024
Interview
Frustrating and Unprofessional Interview Process at Lightbeam.ai
Role Interviewed For: UI Developer
Interview Experience: Negative
Length of Process: 1.5-2 months
After multiple rounds of interviews for a UI Developer role, which included irrelevant questions from backend-focused interviewers, I was left waiting for feedback for over two months, only to eventually be told they were looking for a more senior candidate. Lightbeam.ai's hiring process is disorganized, and their communication is poor.
Detailed Review:
My interview process at Lightbeam.ai was one of the most frustrating experiences I've had. I applied for the UI Developer position and went through four rounds of interviews:
The first round was with the Operations Head of India, which was more of a casual conversation and general questions, nothing technical.
The second round was with a backend engineer who, unsurprisingly, asked backend-related questions, which weren’t relevant to the UI Developer role I applied for.
The third round was conducted by a junior resource, and he only asked one question related to ReactJS, a core skill for the role.
The final round was with the manager, who again focused on backend-specific questions and seemed disinterested in conducting the interview. I asked for clarification on a few points, but his explanations were vague. Despite this, I was able to complete the task well within the time limit.
After the interviews, I was told to wait for feedback. I followed up several times over the course of a month and was repeatedly told that they were still reviewing. Eventually, after nearly two months of waiting, I was informed that they were now looking for a more senior candidate.
The lack of communication, unstructured interviews, and eventual feedback about a sudden change in requirements show a significant level of disorganization. Startups might be dynamic, but this kind of treatment shows a disregard for candidates' time. I would caution others about pursuing opportunities with Lightbeam.ai.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at LightBeam.ai (Mumbai) in Jun 2024
Interview
**Avoid Lightbeam: A Frustrating and Unprofessional Experience**
**TL;DR:**
I invested over 3 hours across 40+ days for 3 rounds of interviews with Lightbeam, only to be told that my experience exceeded the role's requirements even though I had explicitly mentioned my total experience on my resume. Despite multiple emails and calls, the recruiter’s feedback was delayed and unhelpful. Lightbeam's hiring process is disorganized and a complete waste of time. Guess they are too blind or mathematically illiterate to do the calculation for the total experience of a candidate from their resume.
**Detailed Review:**
The HR process is outsourced to Repletio, and they take an excessively long time to communicate. The interviewers from Lightbeam appeared equally unprepared, asking questions unrelated to the actual job responsibilities. It was clear they lacked the necessary expertise to conduct QA/Testing interviews effectively.
Initially, I was contacted by Repletio HR and promptly provided the requested information. Then, there was a 23-day silence with no updates. Suddenly, on the 24th day, I received a call from Repletio HR, hurriedly scheduling two interviews on the same weekday.
Both rounds were conducted by developers who were supporting QA tasks due to a lack of dedicated QA staff, which likely stems from their disorganized hiring process. The questions were a mix of standard QA topics and some odd, product-specific queries.
During the second round, I was asked about testing specific product features. The interviewers seemed like decent people but were totally clueless about QA processes, and I had to explain basic concepts like load testing, canary testing, and live-data testing.
After another week of silence, Repletio HR scheduled a third round focused on system design for test frameworks. This round was the most absurd interview I’ve ever experienced. The interviewer ignored relevant topics like frameworks, tools, and technologies, instead focusing on niche product-specific questions. It felt like they were trying to get free work done.
Following this round, there was another 8+ day silence. I reached out to Repletio HR for feedback and was told that my experience was too high for the role. This was despite them having all my experience details from the start.
In conclusion, Lightbeam and Repletio HR are either blind to obvious resume details, incompetent, or simply enjoy wasting candidates' time. Avoid interviewing with Lightbeam and dealing with Repletio recruiters.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
- tests for cache service.
- tests to create fake data for 5k files.
- tests to check for calendar app where meetings should not overlap.
- other generic QA stuff
Pretty straightforward interview, asked to code an app in React and typescript and some questions for front end development. It was a really good experience interviewing at lightbeamAi. The company is a private company based in San Jose, CA