Vokal Engineering Interview Process

The typical Engineering Interview Process has up to four stages. Each stage is standard across disciplines unless otherwise noted.

Initial screening

The first stage of the interview process is a vetting by the director for whichever discipline the candidate is applying for.

• The discipline director has identified an applicant and decided they'd like to follow-up via a phone screening.
• If a Vokal recruiter has already vetted the candidate with a phone screen, the discipline director may choose to have an in-person meet-and-greet.
• Conversation is about 30 minutes in length.
• Results of this stage should determine whether or not code challenges should be scheduled.

Code challenges

Instructions on conducting a code challenge can be found here.

• A minimum of 2 code challenges occur for every candidate.
• Challenges should be time boxed at 1 hour, with 50 minutes dedicated to completing the challenge.
  • If a challenge ends early the interviewer should spend time with the candidate discussing the role and selling Vokal's engineering team.
  • The coding portion of a challenge should stop at the 50 minute mark to allow 10 minutes of conversation with the candidate.
• Code challenges can and should be diversified across technologies and subject areas.
• After the challenges are complete, interviewers should discuss the candidate's performance privately with the director and determine whether they did well enough to move to the next phase of the process.

Team interview

All candidates meet with other members of the Vokal team for the final round.

• Interviewers should be selected from as diverse a pool as possible, with variance in areas such as discipline, experience level, and gender.
• Interviewers should have 15 minutes a head with the candidate, and can choose to group up for shared sessions.
• Discussion can be technical or more geared to communication skills and personality—the diverse selection of interviewers should encourage a diverse series of topics.

Candidate retro

Retros are an opportunity to discuss the decisions on the candidate and highlight any potential revisions to the interview processes.

• Interviewers should share ultimate hire/no-hire sentiments
• If the candidate's skill levels don't clearly align with a defined skill level, where they best fit should be discussed