An initial screening interview covered my experiences, why I was interested in the role, and working for Riot.

During the screening interview, I was told to expect their hiring process to be very long, around two months. They also admitted they had a history of sexist or ‘bro’ culture in the past (as reported in Kotaku). They stated they were committed to fixing that and suggested I make myself aware of it in case it impacts my decision to apply.

I was put forward for the next round in the process. Initially, they scheduled an interview for a week later, but then they rescheduled for the week after that.

My second-round interview was with the hiring manager. He was very stern and quite aggressive in his questioning, compared to other companies I interviewed with.

At the end of his questions, he asked me to solve a HackerRank question, which, while not totally unexpected, was not outlined as part of this particular interview. Luckily, I was on the call at my PC so I could complete the question, but I may have been calling in via phone.

They said they would get back to me within a day or two, but it took them another full week to do so. They declined my application but at least provided feedback as to why.

Their feedback was that I didn’t have the leadership experience they wanted for this role, which I understand. However, they also said that for this role, they were unable to hire someone coming from another tech stack than their primary one, even though the job advertisement explicitly stated that they could and were open to this. I spent the entire waiting time studying the tech they used, yet they didn’t ask me any questions around it at all.

Overall, the process, while long, was in an understandable format. However, I don’t believe Riot quite knew what they actually wanted for this role. I base that on the feedback I received, and also from the fact that this role was constantly re-edited and re-listed online for months (I had been tracking it).

What experiences did I have in the gaming industry?

Why was I applying to Riot specifically?

Given an array of integers ranging from one to a million, but with one number missing - can you find it?

Can you now find it in a more performant manner?

Can you describe the performance of both solutions?