I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Slack (San Francisco, CA) in Apr 2018
Interview
The interview process with Slack was one of the most empathetic I've had the privilege of experiencing. 😊
With most interviews I've gone through, the company didn't seem to care about me as a person and merely focused on how fast or efficiently I could whiteboard out a data structure/algorithm question taken out of "Cracking the Coding Interview."
Here, I believe the team genuinely wanted to make sure I was not only a great engineer but also a good fit for Slack's culture and development process.
This was like a fresh breath of air that I had not experienced before with technical interviews given that the recruiter, hiring manager, and employees interviewing me were all extremely supportive and on-point.
More insight can be found on their own blog.
- March 5th - I applied online
- March 9th - recruiter reached out
- March 15th - initial recruiter call
- March 19th to 25th - 1 week for a take-home project
- March 29th - positive feedback, time to schedule a call with the hiring manager
- April 5th - call with the hiring manager and on-site approved
- April 13th - prep call for an interview with recruiter
- April 17th - interview on-site
- April 18th - offer extended
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 5 days. I interviewed at Slack (San Francisco, CA) in Jul 2016
Interview
Had a contact there who got me a phone screen scheduled with a recruiter on a Friday morning. The recruiter emailed me 3 minutes before we were supposed to speak saying he wasn't going to make it, but to email him any times I'm available for the next week and he'd be sure to make time. I sent him two times, one Monday morning and one Tuesday morning. Monday rolled past with no response, so Monday evening I emailed my contact there who nagged the recruiter and got them to confirm me for Tuesday (the email confirmation came in at around 9:30pm on Monday).
On our call he was clearly reading from a list of questions, and not really willing to engage conversationally - seeming rather checked out from the conversation. In addition, it sounded like he was eating his lunch while we spoke, with what sounded like chewing noises throughout. I felt like most of the questions should have been for more of a Product Manager role as opposed to an Engineering role, as they were more about features they could add to Slack or new apps I liked and why.
The entire experience with the recruiter, from initial contact until the end was very rude and unprofessional. I felt like I'd been written off as a candidate prior to even talking with him, which made me wonder why he was wasting both of our time.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Slack (San Francisco, CA) in Apr 2016
Interview
A recruiter contacted me via Linkedin. Had a 30 minute conversation with her, where she explained the interview process.
Then, I got an email with the link to an exercise to be completed within a week. I worked on the exercise for a few hours. The exercise itself is straightforward and it does demonstrates front end abilities.
I didn't get passed the exercise step, but what I dislike is that they give zero feedback about why the exercise wasn't accepted.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The exercise consisted of building a small feature where you need to show ability to access API's, update web page without refreshing, using native JS.