Initially I’ll point out that Tableau is big on employee referrals. I applied via their website and immediately was turned down, but when I had a friend, who works for the company in Austin, hand my resume to the team manager, I was immediately contacted.
This is how the process went: I first spoke to the HR director for the team (in Seattle), then a phone interview was setup with the Team Manager of the Customer Success team in Austin, then I went in to do an on-site demo of their software/ in person interviews.
This was a pretty stressful part of the process for me. You pretty much prepare a role play situation where you demo the software for "C-level Exec's" (played by current employees), as if you work for Tableau. Before you do that, you go through 4 rounds of in-person interviews. For this position, it was with employees already in the position, both in the Seattle and Austin offices. The interviews weren't super intense, and they asked similar questions, so you kind of knew what they were looking for. They definitely wanted to know how your previous experience is relevant/ how it would help you excel in this role. I was getting a lot of good feedback in my interviews and on a conversational level, things were flowing really nicely. The last part of the on-site process was the software demo, which I believe was 25 min (including Q&A). It's pretty much duplicating the Getting Started video they have on their website shows, but more from a sales point of view rather than a how-to. They want you to highlight what Tableau can do for a company and make it relatable/give examples of what a company could potentially use this for when analyzing their data.
Anyways, I felt awesome about how the interviews/demo went, and even had the team manager, who was present for the demo, say that mine was one of the best he had seen. I was told the next step in the process would be speaking to the team manager in Seattle, and naturally, I took this as a good sign and that it was pretty likely I would move on.
The next week I received a call from the HR lady that I in Seattle and based on experience that they weren't going to move forward. Now, in hopes of avoiding this coming off as being bitter, I want to speak a little about how messed up in a sense this was.
So, I understand the importance of experience, however, Tableau allowed me to proceed through 2 phone interviews, 4 on-site interviews, and a product demo just to cut me for reasons that one should be cut in the first round of screening. Tableau received my resume in my initial application and was fully aware of the experience I possessed and STILL paraded me through the process. Either they didn't take the time to review my resume or they decided that despite my lack of the experience they were looking for, that I was still a promising candidate. This now begs the question, why would their reason for not moving forward with me be based on my experience? Also, I was informed that the feedback from both the interviews and the demo was extremely positive, so there seems to be another disconnect in their actions and words.
After a month of confusion from what had just happened/ looking at everything as gaining an experience, I surprisingly received an email from the team manager in Austin wondering if I was still interested in Tableau. Apparently, the team was now at a point where they could hire people that may not have as much experience but that have the passion (aka Me). Aside from the fact that I felt jerked around by them last time, I still was super passionate about the company and definitely up for another chance to join their team! I should've known that this was going to end poorly by the duration of time it took to set up the phone interview with the manager in Seattle, however, I understood that they're not just waiting around to set up phone interviews and are busy with their daily operations. Regardless, I finally spoke with the manager in Seattle, and it did not go as smoothly as the first time. She continued to ask me things about my experience with proprietary software and things I obviously had little to no experience in, which was established a month ago. I was definitely not feeling confident about that interview, but I figured that the Austin team manager took the initiative to contact me and blatantly said that they could hire someone with little experience, so there maybe was a chance. It was seriously déjà vu! I received the same call from the HR lady in Seattle saying that based on experience they decided not to move forward! As if in the month that had passed between them saying no the first time and them contacting me again, I had miraculously obtained the experience they were looking for.
