At Ascent, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about our technical hiring process and how it reflects our tech team values. We view our hiring process not just as our chance to evaluate candidates, but our best opportunity to give candidates an opportunity to evaluate us. To that end, we like to be as transparent as possible about our process and what kind of experience a candidate can expect when they interview with us.
Below is a pretty detailed look at our technical hiring process. If you’re interested in learning more about Ascent and potentially going through this process yourself, take a look at our open technical roles and feel free to apply!
STEP 1:
Let’s introduce ourselves to each other! Typically we either grab coffee or hop on a Google Hangout for 30 minutes. During this time the hiring manager explains more about Ascent, our values, our product, and the open role. The candidate can also share a bit about their technical background and especially what they’d like their next career step to look like. We end by talking about our hiring process, our technical values [LINK TO TECH VALUES POST], and next steps.
STEP 2:
If both the candidate and the hiring manager want to move forward, we next have the Tech Lead of the team with the open role meet with the candidate for 45 minutes. The tech lead can explain in more detail what kinds of technical problems we solve on that team and learn more about how the candidate works with teams.
STEP 3a:
In parallel with scheduling and having the conversation with the Tech Lead, we also ask you to spend a couple of hours at your leisure working on a technical exercise and a short written exercise. We give you a week so that you don’t feel undue pressure, but generally candidates spend about two hours all together on these exercises. The technical exercise varies by team, but the written exercise is the same across teams: “In 500-1000 words (1-2 pages) explain a technical project you worked on to a non-technical audience, and connect it to our technical values in any manner of your choosing.” We find this written exercise to be a really helpful way to get to know our candidates and engage them with our values.
STEP 3b:
After completing the exercises, the hiring manager or the tech lead will spend an hour with the candidate on Hangouts walking through the candidate’s technical exercise, asking about specifical technical decisions or tradeoffs, and inquiring about possible extensions to the work and how the candidate might approach them. Additionally, the hiring manager or tech lead will discuss the written work and ask questions about our team values. Finally, we provide more opportunity for the candidate to ask us questions!
STEP 4:
If all has gone well up to this point, we’ll be eager to introduce the candidate to other folks on the team with a series of in-office discussions and a lunch (depending on timing). A sample schedule for this might look like the following:
STEP 5:
Within a couple of days of meeting, the team internally will meet to share their experiences with the candidate. We use an internal rubric centered on our values to remove as much bias as possible from our evaluation. Ultimately the hiring manager will make a final decision about extending an offer to the candidate. If we’re lucky enough to be able to make an offer, the hiring manager will reach out to the candidate with the details of the offer and give the candidate some time to consider their decision.
STEP 6:
If the candidate accepts our offer, we first get extremely excited at the prospect of welcoming a new team member!
Then we put together a comprehensive onboarding plan, including a first day schedule, a first three month plan based on the work available and our perception of the candidate’s strengths and growth opportunities during the hiring process, a one-pager with links to all our important documents (e.g. Employee Manual, Tech Team Onboarding Guide, links to various benefits and tech accounts), and we order a computer for the candidate. We also appoint a current team member as the candidate’s onboarding buddy, and we set up a Day 1 welcome lunch with the candidate and the team.
Then? We get to work!