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Software Engineer Interview Experience - Russia

October 23, 2014
Negative ExperienceNo Offer

Process

I hate to say it, but this was the worst waste of time I've ever had.

I applied online via their website and received a reply from HR only a month later. They invited me to take an online logic test, which was pretty trivial and took about 15 minutes.

About a week later, they invited me to a Skype interview with HR. It lasted about half an hour and covered standard HR questions about my background, etc.

Afterwards, they gave me a code assignment to complete within 7 days. As I applied for a front-end position, the task was to build a small, interactive web page. It wasn't difficult if you have any decent web development experience. For me, it was quite easy and I finished it in one evening.

After another week, they invited me to a Skype interview with two members of the dev team. The questions were about JavaScript, again nothing too hard if you have at least some experience.

After another week, they invited me to another interview with the team lead.

After yet another week, they invited me to two more interviews, one with a mid-level manager and another with a VP. Yes, at that point, I started to feel that this was going nowhere.

All these individuals asked me the exact same standard HR questions, without any interest or emotion. Both the team lead and his manager seemed quite inexperienced. Both admitted they had only been in their positions for a couple of months. They acted as if it were their first day on the job and couldn't even answer basic questions about the team and work process. They claimed to be like a startup, but in reality, I felt I was talking to some big, faceless corporation filled with "pointy-haired bosses." They mentioned their hierarchy is flat, but in reality, I spoke with people from three different management levels, and judging by what they said, there seem to be more managers than developers in the company.

After yet another week, I received the standard, copy-pasted rejection email.

Overall, I spent 2.5 months and didn't even hear any reason for my rejection. I understand that some candidates simply don't match certain companies, but if you put a candidate through five interviews and two testing tasks, you could at least spend two minutes writing something meaningful about why you feel they don't match.

Questions

Standard JavaScript questions about scope, context, closures, prototypes, inheritance, etc.

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 2 interview experiences for the Klarna Software Engineer role in Russia.

Success Rate

0%
Pass Rate

Klarna's interview process for their Software Engineer roles in Russia is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.

Experience Rating

Positive0%
Neutral0%
Negative100%

Candidates reported having very negative feelings for Klarna's Software Engineer interview process in Russia.

Klarna Work Experiences