I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at innoWake (Austin, TX)
Interview
Came in through 3rd party recruiter; then interviewed with in house hr; another technical round where you looked at code and gave feedback (this was through hr); then given a formatting framework assignment to do (this required extensive amount of work - where the requirement tried to be clear but had parts of it that were ambiguous and made the assignment challenging / confusing); then interview with director of operations where they asked resume questions, explained role, and seemed to probe culture fit; next day another Skype interview with technical lead (he basically just went over your java task again and what the role would encompass).
From a technical standpoint you seem to work with: java / services (no framework), no ui technologies, legacy technologies (it deals with legacy migration and modernization - cobol, mainframes, etc.), and using their proprietary migration and modernization tools.
The organization claims that it is flat, which is great. They also claim that it is 40 hours, and that they give the time back for the next week if you go over for this week.
This position also requires an extensive amount of traveling. I was open minded of up to 50% of time, but then there was discussion of back to back weeks where I would be on the road.
Asked technical lead and director if there was anything that I could do (in a couple days) to set aside any remaining concerns that they had. They said no. I then get feedback from the 3rd party that "I am too green". The tough and insulting part of being told that I am "too green", is that it came from a 24ish year old account manager.
I put an EXTENSIVE amount of time into the coding assignment. I was proud to give them the work, but I still tried to keep the work in context, and I didn't have someone to answer some basic questions, or garner a code review. This didn't seem to be enough. The client seems very picky (and it seems that this is coming from the technical lead and the managing partner in Austin). LOTS of work just for 20 minutes of time with the technical lead with no real technical questions, and then a subsequent rejection from the managing partner.
I know from talking in the community that I am not the first person that they have rejected. They seem to do this a lot (and even quite a bit after 5th round interviews), and seem to have no consideration or thought for others time and hopes. For this reason I would suggest staying away from their interviewing process and using the very LARGE portion of time now regained to interview with multiple other companies that seem to take a more ethical approach.
I realize hard work is not everything, but it is something, and at the end of the day you are going to be training someone on the job to do what you wanted them to do anyway. I'd like to think that I still work relatively smart. It's really too bad that staffing agencies make it all too easy today to use and abuse candidates.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Resume specific questions, high level overview of resume, things you do on the outside (interview with the director). Interview with the technical lead (5th interview) was just a high level walk through of the previous assignment and roles. Was told that he needed to look at my assignment further at the end of the interview, and hr would get back to me (this seemed like a blow off and recant).
