Square Software Engineer Team Matching questions
Cleared onsite, spoke to 3 managers and didn't get any offers.
After the first 2 team matchings the recruiter came back to me with feedback that the managers weren't sure about my passion/didn't know what motivates me.
But I did mention something like:
- I love working on large scale software that serves a huge customer base / the general public
- I want to focus on backend
- I want to take part in more high level design tasks
The recruiter then advised me to try to connect to past experience when answering these questions. Advice taken, I prepared a more comprehensive story for the final team matching.
In the final team matching I presented my story to the manager. I thought I did fine but maybe I screwed up answering the following 2 questions:
1. Why leave Amzn? I said I want to explore more in this industry, see what technologies other companies are working on.
2. Why join Square? I said the finance sector is pretty new and interesting to me + Square has huge customer base and challenging problems.
Well I have to say I gave pretty honest answers and I am really curious what exactly Square is looking for. Having said that if there are 3 different managers who all believe that I won't succeed in this company, it's better for me not to join it.
I am just shocked that I never realized I suck at answering behavioral questions. Always thought I am a normal, friendly and easy-to-work-with person.
Update: Rejection after 3 team matchings. TBH if Square could just add one more behavior round in the full loop and reject fast if the candidate fails, the whole process could've ended within 2 weeks instead of 2 months. And what made it worse was that the recruiter told me "team matchings aren't interviews"... 🤦🏼♀️It's not just about me, why waste the time of those recruiters & HMs? I could feel both parties were losing patience in the end.😭
comments
I just met with a few teams last week and team matching went well. It was more of a conversation rather than an interview. Just the HM explaining their product, trying to figure out if you were a good match for team as well as for you to decide at the same time.
I can tell you I didn’t do anything special to show over enthusiasm or anything out of this world. I just talked to them with genuine interest in what they were working, what type of challenges they had, the roadmap, etc.
My guess is they are getting picky because they can pick from a large pool of candidates.
I recently talked with some managers at Amazon after my interviews, but it was more like they were selling me their team and making me feel that I am welcome.