I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 3 days. I interviewed at Marchex (Seattle, WA) in Aug 2013
Interview
Extremely unprofessional in the hiring process. Phony excuses and promises to keep stringing people along, not saying Yes or No. It's been a month now.
Phone and onsite which takes 4-5 hours. If all goes well, another round of interviews with VP and a PM. Basic algorithm questions and number theory question on prime number that is on the easy side. I went through all the steps fine and took out another chunk of time to meet with the VP and the PM and at every step, the internal recruiter has asked me if I would accept the role should they offer.
Received positive feedback and internal HR promised an answer next day. Nothing, but an excuse about some all day company meeting. Then another promise of decision at the end of week, came and went, still nothing. I reached out to HR directly, and again was another excuse saying, the hiring manager was on the cusp of saying something but got busy and he will reach out to me next week. It's been a month, and I haven't bothered with them.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
nothing really difficult, but they seem to want people that cater to exactly what they are doing. ie. they use RoR and I mentioned scalability issues with default ORMs, they seem to take that as an offense (especially the VP) vs embracing different opinions and understand the issue. They use index cards for SCRUM, and they again seem to take offense that I prefer a software system that helps me keep track of sprint statistics... etc.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Marchex (Seattle, WA) in Dec 2012
Interview
An hour phone interview, followed by a day interviewing the team. The day was broken up into hour long interview sessions with a mix of technical and team fit questions. I've been working in the industry for a long time so they seemed to recognize that and not ask the same questions you would get as a person right out of school.
The phone interview they tried to do a shared screen question but the state of the art is still pretty poor. As a result that didn't work and they asked more general questions. Have a pad of paper and a pencil handy so you can keep focused. Use a speaker phone and a quiet room if at all possible.
One thing that Marchex does do right is that they responded to my application with more than a form letter. After the acceptance they sent a card signed by my new team all welcoming me to the team. Then in the first week took me out for a team lunch. My understanding is that they treat all candidates like future customers something other companies could well learn.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a date, add a month, a day, a week. Now reverse the process.
