The first round was online coding at CoderPad. I was paired with a developer in Shopify. I could choose any language that I am familiar with. The question itself was not too hard. I would say it was like a LeetCode easy question. And the interviewer posted the question directly on CoderPad and we could ask any questions to him. We booked 60 minutes for this round. The introduction took 5 minutes. And 5 minutes to read and understand the questions. And it took me around 20 minutes to solve the problem; so we ended up finishing this round early and the interviewer told me that I passed.
The second round was the life story round where I got rejected and I would really recommend Shopify to change the title of this round of the interview. After this interview, I really don't think this is about the adventure of our life or our career life story. It is more about the two way conversation and they want to know if your culture, background, and experience is a good match or not. To me, this is a culture fit or experience fit interview.
So, before the interview, I prepared around 50 minutes long contents about my career life story. When I went to the interview, the interviewer said that I didn't need to prepare anything. And then she started to ask me questions. So we jumped around the stories to answer the questions she asked which was not the best way to present the life story that I prepared. She also gave me some free time to talk about the part that I wanted to talk about. The interview was scheduled for 60 minutes, but we ended the interview around 50 minutes but I felt she had her answer before already. And in the end, I only had a chance to share half of what I had prepared.
If I knew the process was like this, I would have prepared for this interview very differently. To me, if it is about the life story. Then I would prepare the part which I think is most interesting and I would drive the conversation. But if it is a two way conversation about getting to know if I am a good fit. I will let the interviewers drive the conversation and let them ask me the questions first. Then, I would try to feel and guess what they were looking for and then share the past experience that matched the questions only. Of course, no matter what, be authentic.
If the 5 characteristics they listed on their career page are truely what they are looking for, I would still have very high confidence that I have all 5 throughout my career life. So, I either didn't share enough examples as I mentioned above, or the interviewer didn't agree with me, or they were looking for something beyond these 5 characteristics. In my opinion, I think they are looking for some characteristics if it is currently a good fit to the team.
The second reason that I would recommend Shopify to change the title is because when somebody shared the life story and got rejected. It will easily become a judgement on a person.
For both rounds, the interviewers were very friendly. And they kept me posted about my status.
I wish all of the future candidates good luck, but if you got rejected at the life story round like me, don't feel discouraged. Your life story is still unique, beautiful and meaningful.
