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[ Knowledge Base : Software Interview Process ]

Created by [ Rowan Dempster], last modified on Dec 24, 2019

The software interview process is a six-step process that begins 8 weeks before the start of a term to recruit for new core members. The process applies to all new member positions in Software and will be uniform among the different groups up until the host matching process. The interview process was inspired by Google's and Facebook's standardized interview process for interns.

Job Posting

The software interview process begins with a job posting on the WATO website, which will be managed and promoted by Internal Affairs. There will be a single job posting for all Software core member positions, with the description indicating possible teams they may join. The single job posting is to simplify and standardize the interview process and to prevent the majority of software applicants from applying for the most interesting-sounding teams (eg. Perception) and have less applicants on complex and more obscure teams (eg. Processing). The job posting should open 8 weeks before the start of the term and close 4 weeks before the start of the term.

Interview Selection

The Director of Software, with help from Managers, will screen applications and select a number of applicants for an interview based on the expected number of openings. The selected applicants will be then sent an email invite them to the interview process. This process should be performed 4 weeks before the start of the term.

Interviews

Each interview candidate should have a new candidate profile created based on this template to document the interviews: TODO
Interviews should be done between 4 and 3 weeks before the start of the term.

Culture Interview

The Director of Software and Managers from the previous term will perform the culture interviews, in person (preferred) or online. The interview will be 30 minutes with the following format:

10 minutes - Introduction to WATO, what the teams do, type of work being done, core member expectations
15 minutes - Going over the candidate's resume, experience, interests, career goals, expectations, and commitments
5 minutes - Candidate Questions

What to look for
This interview should answer the following questions

These are examples of the questions that should be answered in the interview, and documented in the candidate's profile.

Technical Interview

The Director of Software and Managers from the previous term will perform the technical interviews, in person (preferred) or online. The interview will be 45 minutes and have roughly the following format:

5 minutes - Introduction, description of what's about to happen
35 minutes - Coding questions
5 minutes - Candidate questions

The coding question will consist of two questions to test a candidate's problem solving and coding skills. This can be done in any reasonable language or pseudocode and be written on a Google Doc.

  1. A simple "Leetcode easy" question. This question should test a candidate's ability to write simple algorithms using basic data structures such as arrays, lists, and hashmaps. Examples: Most frequent word in a string, Is a word a palindrome, Reverse a linked list
  2. A "Leetcode medium" question, if the candidate was able to easily solve the easy question. This question should test a candidate's ability to use complex data structures such as trees, graphs, heaps, and simple dynamic programming. Examples: Diameter of a binary tree, Modified coin change, Merge k sorted lists

Offer

Once all interviews are done, the Director of Software and Software Managers will conduct a meeting to go over all of the candidates' profiles and determine which candidates should proceed based on their cultural and technical interview performance, limited by how many members the Software division wants to hire for the term across all groups. This should be done 3 weeks before the start of the term. Once decided, the list of accepted candidates will be sent to the Internal Affairs team to offer them the position.

Host Matching

The host matching process is the process of finding a software member the best software group to match them to. First, each candidate will be sent the following Google Form to indicate what type of work they're interested in and two groups they'd be interested to work for, given descriptions of what each groups do. This will be done 3 to 2 weeks before the start of the term.

Based on the candidate's profiles and responses, the incoming Director of Software and Software Managers will then place all candidates to a group. The candidates will then be notified by email about the results. All incoming Managers will then conduct a 30-minute one-on-one meeting 2 to 1 weeks before the start of the term to describe the work the team does, and what the candidate should expect. During this meeting, if either the Manager or candidate think that they are no longer a good fit, they have the opportunity to switch their matched group.

Document generated by Confluence on Nov 19, 2021 12:21

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