Imagine being in a room, eye-to-eye, knee-to-knee, with someone who’s convinced they are smarter than just about anyone. They have tremendous responsibilities and want you to know it. They also just graduated from school within the last three years, and this is their first job. That is what a half-a-day of Robinhood interviews are like. The thought of working alongside such self-important know-it-alls seems like after-school detention with the high school stoner club.

Prior to my interview, as a customer, I had been impressed with their growth and popularity. However, they may have just created a product that was a good fit for an ongoing bull market.

Overall, the interview experience was really poor compared to other companies of similar age and size. Interviewers were not trained on how to interview nor assess candidates. Their questions were straight out of engineering interviewing textbooks, and they weren’t briefed on their focus areas. Recruiters were not available to coordinate interviews for changes, and candidates were left staring at the walls when interviewers left. Most importantly, the recruiters had no sense of communication pre- and post-interview. This is okay if you are Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, or Google, but not okay if you are a 200-person startup going up against the likes of JP Morgan and Charles Schwab.

Tell me about yourself. This was shocking, mostly because they hadn't seemed to have seen a resume prior and were genuinely surprised to learn about my background.