I first got in touch with Handshake earlier in the year, but the timing wasn't quite right. Circumstances changed, and I reached out to a friend at the company. I got back in touch with a member of their people team, who listened intently to my goals and offered some good reasons why Handshake was a good fit.

The next step was an hour-long technical interview with the hiring manager. We had a great conversation while I completed two technical tasks in a very conversational, low-stress format. I should mention I was interviewing for a remote position, so the whole process was done via video chat (we used Zoom).

The final round was a ~5-hour long string of interviews with some breaks built in. The interviews were all with folks who I'd be working with on the team. The plurality of the time was spent on a technical challenge, which was also collaborative and more about process and problem-solving than the end product. There was also a software architecture portion of the interview and an interview with a product manager. The structure of this final round interview was sent in detail in advance of the interview along with some resources, so I had the opportunity to prepare and put my best foot forward.

I ended up getting an offer and taking the job. Even if it didn't work out, though, I was impressed at the maturity and transparency of the process and thankful to have spent time with a group of truly nice people.

On which part of the product development pipeline do you prefer to focus?