I applied online. The process took 3-4 weeks since I submitted the resume until I had a phone interview. Two days after the interview I got an email with the sentence "As you know, we received numerous applications and after careful consideration, have decided to move forward with other candidates".
About the company (information from the interview):
It seems the company has been growing constantly since its creation, passing from 15 employees in 2007 to more than 100 today. I couldn't get a clear understanding of main customers, size of projects, perspectives and vision of the company. No clear understanding either about possibilities of career development.
Something about me (just to give context to the interview):
I have a PhD, I have done a postdoc, and I have worked for 3 different companies.
About the interviewer:
He was a senior employee of the company with technical profile. He requested a lot of material (papers, theses, transcripts, code examples) in advance to prepare the interview. He was very polite during the interview.
The interview:
I didn't get a good impression. I will mention some of the "red flags":
- The interview was too long (more than 90 minutes). Personally, I think 40-50 minutes should be more than enough to know if a candidate doesn't have the right profile for a position.
- I was applying for a senior position, but a huge amount of the questions were about courses I took 10 years ago during Master and PhD studies. Also, there were a lot of questions based on "keywords" from my resume. There were very few questions about my experience and the projects I was involved during the last 5 years. Practically no questions either about the thesis and papers I provided for the interview.
- I felt the long questionnaire (and also the additional material) was mainly used to check if what I put in my resume was true or not, rather than in getting a better understanding of my background.
- I found very curious a question about if I had created fundamental algorithms for searching or sorting (like mergesort, etc.). I found even most curious the silence of the interviewer when I told him I didn't know anyone that had created this kind of algorithms.
Post interview:
- After I was rejected for the position I applied (Senior High-Performance Computing Software Developer), I got a phone call to let me know my resume was reconsidered for a postdoc position.
- I exchanged a couple of emails with my interviewer. I passed the feedback I wrote above to him. He nicely replied each one of the points. I understood (but partially share) his perspective and his interview methodology from his answers.
