After I applied online, I was contacted by one of the recruiters via email. The first stage of the hiring process was the Evernote coding challenge. Basically, the recruiter sent me a problem specification, and I had to submit Java codes. After that went well, I had a Skype interview with a software engineer. The interview lasted about 45 minutes, and I was instructed to write Java codes on collabedit.com. The difficulty level of the questions was not on a par with those of the on-site interview questions.
My on-site interview began at 12:30pm. The recruiter greeted me and gave me a tour of the building. Then I was led to a conference room where I had my first interview with a product manager. She proceeded to ask me behavioral questions such as "Why do you want to work at Evernote?", "Tell me about a project you worked on recently." That went on for about an hour, and then I had a streak of 4 technical interviews back-to-back (I think each interview lasted about an hour.) By the time the 4th interviewer came into the conference room, my brain was exhausted and entered "nope, I'm done" mode. Given that I did horribly during the 3rd interview, I would have not received an offer even if my brain remained energized during the whole interview process. However, I feel like I could have done better on the 4th interview question if it were the first problem I had to solve that day. At other on-site interviews, either I was asked if I needed a break at the beginning of each interview session, or they placed behavioral-question interview session between technical-question interview sessions so that the problem-solving part of my brain could cool down for a bit while answering behavioral questions. One of the interviewers walked me down to a fridge to get me a bottle of sparkling water, but other than that, I was offered no time for break. Maybe it's one of the traits they look for in prospective employees: being able to brainstorm for a long period of time without taking a break. Certainly I wasn't the right candidate for it.
Some of the common interview questions:
- Given two binary tree nodes, find the nearest common ancestor.
- Design a class that represents a deck of cards. (Don't worry about jokers.)
- Hanoi tower
Overall, it was a positive interview experience even though I did not receive an offer. Everyone I met in the building was very nice and friendly, and the office environment looked modern and stylish with lots of free stuffs (I also heard they have great perks.) There were many young people, so it definitely looked like a great place to work for new university grads. Best of wishes to those who seek career opportunities here.
