I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Snap (London, England) in Jul 2021
Interview
Bizarre...
I was approached by someone in the talent team (I won't name names) via email to schedule an interview with the hiring manager. No salary was attached and it appeared this is only discussed upon offering.
The interview itself was great, he was a very interesting and the time went by very quickly. However the role didn't come with much detail and felt a little cut and paste. It sounded like I'd be a glorified presentation designer in the B2B team with him describing tasks such as 'narrative design' being the core work.
However I left feeling confident and excited about the next steps. I was then contacted a week later by the talent team member again saying an invite was sent to me in the week (nothing in my inbox or spam). It was re-sent and I was told it would be a panel interview next week.
Upon accepting I noticed the times were in BST and would be with x5 members of the US team. Bare in mind I'll have work from 8am-7pm they put in slots running from 7:30pm - 10pm. I know due to international timings it can be tricky, but it would have been nice to break these up over two days at least. However I was told these employees are "pretty senior with manic schedules". Thus I agreed to proceed and accepted the invite.
At this time I was on holiday and wanting to do some more prep I emailed the talent employee the next day asking for a more detailed description. She then replied with;
"Upon reflection, we have decided to uplevel the role to a more senior position, so unfortunately we will not be progressing with you further and will be cancelling the interviews we had scheduled. "
I was completely blindsided and still not sure how it could have changed so drastically in less than 24 hours. I asked what the new role would be as I'm already working as a Senior Designer. Yet once again a detailed description or explanation can't be provided.
I honestly feel like I've had a lucky escape... Seems like a company which has no values for other peoples time or effort. Also I hate when salaries aren't enclosed at even a band level.
Spending 5 hours after work in interviews with no detailed description or salary indication seems unfair.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Recommend one book you think every creative should have (could be art/design monograph, novel, comic book etc etc). Why?
I applied online. The process took 7 weeks. I interviewed at Snap in Jun 2021
Interview
Really bad experience. I actually had a phone screen maybe a year ago for a role, only to be ghosted by the recruiter. They then reached back out to me about 2 months ago, and I figured I'd give them a second chance. Overall, I had a 7 week process from the initial phone screen, to the manager screen, to the 5 hour interview loop, to the project, and final interview. After passing the interview loop with 4-5 people, I was tasked with a project that took me around 3 hours to complete. I sent this back, and didn't hear from my recruiter for over a week after multiple follow ups. She then called me that I passed the project round, and was now a finalist where I could wait for placement on a team for up to 6 months.
There was an immediate availability open, and I interviewed with the team for that. I was then informed via an automated email from my recruiter days later that I did not get an offer and "thanks for considering us." I was confused as I thought I was still a finalist and could keep interviewing with different teams, but it didn't seem that way. I reached out to my recruiter for more info and she never got back to me.
Snap's logo isn't a ghost for no reason.
I will not be interviewing for this company again, as they clearly lack respect and communication. At the minimum, I would expect the decency to give me a call and let me know you're passing on me after almost 2 months of interviews and projects. I happen to be one of their clients in my current job for one of the biggest advertisers out there...not a good look, Snap. Don't waste your time.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Why Snap?
Why Account Management?
Tell me about a time you went above and beyond for a client.
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Snap (London, England) in Jul 2021
Interview
1st Stage: Had an initial chat with the engineering manager. Discussed my background and found out a bit more about the role. I specifically asked if the interview for the Front End role will be algorithmic or not, and was told that it will be adjusted for Front End. I was told that they adjust the interviews based on the candidate's background.
2nd Stage: The interviewer seemed to be surprised by my Front-end oriented background during the initial discussion we had before the interview started. It felt like they were expecting to interview someone for a generalist Software Engineer role instead. I was presented with a binary tree question (serialize/deserialize).
I found the whole process to be disorganised from start to finish. I received a video interview invitation after the initial chat with the engineering manager, and then received an on-site invitation by HR as well before the video interview had even taken place! I found that quite confusing and when responding to HR asking to confirm this is a mistake, I never received a reply back.
As far as the video interview goes, I was told that this would not be a "Crack the coding interview" type of interview, and that it will adjusted for Front End, thus I will not need to study Leetcode style data structures and algorithms. I was expecting a more JavaScript-based question to either build UI or data structures/algortithms but with a front end slant and in JavaScript. I was instead asked to solve a binary tree problem. As mentioned above, the interviewer seemed completely taken by surprise by the fact that I have a JavaScript background, as if they had never taken a look at my CV or they were simply not hiring for Front End and there had been some sort of misunderstanding.
To sum up, both the 1st stage engineering manager and the 2nd stage interviewer were really nice, however I was disappointed with the entire process, it felt disorganised, something which I did not expect.