The process took 7 weeks. I was referred by an employee.

First, I had phone screens with a recruiter and a hiring manager. Both went pretty well.

Then, I had phone interviews with 3 different teams.

The first interview was with an engineer who seemed overly serious and somewhat rude. He kept saying things like, 'Everything you type will be reviewed by the whole team to evaluate your skills.' Maybe it's just me, but such pressure made me really nervous, and I messed up an easy interview question that I had practiced only the day before. After this, nobody got back to me for 2 weeks. Already assuming I had bombed the interview, I moved on with my life.

In 2 weeks, the same recruiter called me again and asked if I was available for another phone interview (with no feedback about the first interview). My research of the position indicated that the new interview was for a position in a different team. Because the recruiter claimed the position was 'urgent,' I scheduled it first thing in the morning the day after my vacation – only to be stood up by the interviewer. On the same day, a different recruiter called me to set up an interview with yet another team, while the interview I was stood up for also got rescheduled.

Both the second and third phone interviews took place on the same day. I had a pleasant experience with both engineers. One of the teams ended up getting back to me the next day to invite me onsite.

From a technical perspective, the onsite interview was not too hard for an average person (depending on one’s skills), but there were a few questions that caught me by surprise. For instance, I had to build a simple HTML/CSS/JavaScript page that calls a public API (no frameworks or libraries), which is not something an average software engineer does every day, even if they are frontend-focused. The hiring manager dug deeper into my work experience; some of his questions indicated they were looking for someone with a bit more experience than me.

About a week later, the recruiter called me and explained that the team decided to move forward with a different candidate. They gave me some feedback that I didn’t do that well on the HTML/CSS/JavaScript question. I appreciated getting a quick and direct response. It was also written on my onsite interview invitation that I should expect to hear back within a week of the interview, or contact the VP of Talent Acquisition if I didn’t. One of the interviewers told me that it is a recent Intuit policy to make hiring decisions quickly and not leave candidates hanging.

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