The interview process, as described, was fully remote.

I spoke with a recruiter shortly after submitting my application. We discussed the role and what Canva is like as a company. They also asked about my current role and what I'm looking for in my next position. The recruiter emphasized that they only wanted to move me forward if there was a strong chance I would accept an offer, as they had many candidates in the pipeline. I explained I couldn't guarantee that but was still keen to proceed due to my excitement about Canva. We then moved on to the first technical round.

Before receiving the date for the first round, I received an offer from a consultancy company where I was also interviewing. I discussed this with the company and we agreed to set the decision deadline for the end of the following week, which was a reasonable timeframe for concluding other ongoing interviews. I promptly emailed the Canva recruiter to update them and asked if it was feasible for Canva to complete their process by the end of that same week.

The recruiter called me the next day and made several negative remarks about consultancy companies. They stated, "I would get bored and just reapply to Canva in a year anyway," and "I shouldn't let a consultancy company dictate a deadline for me" (which was untrue; the deadline was proposed by me, and the company had agreed to accommodate it). The recruiter also brought up that I had applied to Canva and withdrawn from the interview process approximately three years prior, having accepted an offer from my current company instead. They then made a critical comment about my career choices, saying, "Imagine where your career would have been if you had gone with us back then."

This entire exchange felt unprofessional. I felt I wasn't treated with the basic respect deserved by a candidate, simply because I had chosen another company over Canva in the past and there was a possibility I might do so again. I am more inclined to work for a company after hearing positive feedback about the work and its people. When the approach shifts to belittling other companies and candidates to secure their acceptance, it makes me want to withdraw from the process.

I ultimately completed the first-round technical interview as it was already scheduled. I wanted to see if I could navigate the full process, as I still considered Canva a good company to work for, though my enthusiasm had diminished significantly after the conversation with the recruiter. The interview was a 60-minute pair-programming session with an engineer. I shared my IDE screen and coded a solution to a given prompt.

I soon learned I had advanced to the next and final interview round, which was scheduled to be over three hours long and included multiple technical and behavioral sessions. I decided to withdraw my application at that point. My schedule in the upcoming days was fully booked, and I couldn't allocate a large enough block of time for the final round. This decision was also influenced by the unpleasant conversation with the recruiter and the fact that I had strong offers in hand at the time.

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