I applied through a recruiter. The process took 6 weeks. Beware about wasting your time unless you agree with racist, sexist, woke hiring policies. It was a very drawn-out process over 6+ weeks. I initially expressed interest on one of their LinkedIn advertisements and was contacted by one of their HR people.

Despite the process being very drawn out, the initial 3 interviews were very positive and the people who interviewed me were extremely nice and genuine. It wasn't until the final "team fit" interview with members of the team that had been selected for me to join did I get to see the true colours of Xero. The interview was meant to be a "team fit" style interview, but it seemed that they were uninterested in finding out whether I would fit the team in any kind of professional manner, and more interested in finding my political alignment and whether I agreed with discriminatory hiring practices in order to meet their "diversity" quotas. Two questions in particular highlighted this: "How do you think we should achieve diversity in the team" and "How do you think we should hire people in order to achieve diversity in the team".

Bear in mind, I was interviewing for the position of Software Developer, so why would they be interested in asking me about hiring policies? My answers involved talking about how they should hire the "best person for the job", ensuring that we take into account "different skillsets and backgrounds", but this answer clearly wasn't "woke enough" for the interviewer, as she followed up with "so you don't mean real diversity, you mean technical diversity". I genuinely believe that the answer she wanted from me was to explain how they should hire based on their race, gender, and sexuality in order to achieve their quotas.

After this interview, I knew that I would never want to work in a toxic woke company like Xero, but was surprised to receive a call from a recruiter explaining that "despite being very technically capable, you are not a good fit for the team" and hence not receiving an offer. I seriously recommend anyone thinking about applying to Xero to think about whether they want to waste their time. Unless you support these regressive woke policies, you won't fit in at Xero.

How should we hire people to achieve diversity? Two answers.