Sorry for the late post. I gave Rippling interview 10-11 months before and I had a very negative experience while interviewing at Rippling. There are several things I would like to point out regarding the interview process at rippling.
- DS Algo round
In this round, first we chatted for 15 mins and then he asked me a medium problem which I completed in 25-30 minutes without any handholding, then in the last 20 minutes he asked me a hard problem.
Now, one cannot solve a hard problem in 20 mins, But I came with the Algorithm in the 20 mins and the interviewer agreed that, in 20 minutes one cannot come up with an optimised algorithm for a hard problem, he assured me that Rippling will consider this thing.
The Next day I got the feedback that I got rejected.
They conducted another round of DS algo interview.
- DS Algo Round
In this round he asked me a medium level problem and I solved it in 27 minutes without any hand holding. He had some difficulty understanding my code so I debugged all the test cases in order to make him understand. After this he asked me another medium level problem, I solved it with an assumption, later on the interviewer said that you cannot take that assumption and I agreed and I solved it.
The Next day I got the feedback that I got rejected.
How one person can get rejected even after he solved the problems.
Now here some problem I would like to identify in the interview process so that you won’t lose any potential candidate in future and Here at my current company I am incharge of hiring, so I am in some position to point out problems
- The Interviewer should set the expectations for every round. For example at the start of the interview, the interviewer should tell the candidate that he is going to ask 2 problems and the candidate has to solve it in 45 minutes.
- The Interviewer should set the direction because in 45 mins of time a lot of approaches can come to the candidate's mind, it's the interviewer 's responsibility to make the candidate go towards the right approach. Here at Rippling, interviewers were really quiet. What I mean is basically if the candidate is going in the wrong direction then just stop him.
- Nobody can solve a hard problem in 20 minutes, so you should ask one easy and one hard problem in the interview so that both problems can be solved in 45 minutes. Don’t ask one medium problem and one hard problem in 45 minutes.
- Feedback was based on level 2 problem, nobody considered the level1 problem and how I solved it. Because level 1 problem in both the interviews was not easy it was medium level.
- In the second round, I solved everything but the interviewer just took one mistake that I did which was I made an assumption while solving the second problem. He actually took this as a negative, But here I would like to say even after I took the assumption I solved the problem and I clearly told him that the approach would work and I proved it with the test cases also. Then he asked me not to take this assumption and after that also I solved the problem. Now , you guys tell me how it is a rejection ?? So By this experience I would like to say that interviewers are looking for one tiny mistake so that they can reject the person, they are ignoring the positives.
- You should conduct interviewer training Just like Google, Facebook does so that every interviewer should have a similar judging process. Interviews need to be conducted properly as they reflect the image of the company, and every company wants that their candidates should go with positive experience.
In Rippling, the interviewer doesn’t set any expectations and they don’t value candidate positives also. Glass half empty approach never works while interviewing.
Many of my friends have told me about the weird expectation that Rippling has. Even this same thing happened with Google, their hiring ratio went around 1% then they changed the hiring process by doing the above things that I mentioned. Watch Gayle lakmann macdowell (CEO of career cup) interview on how they improved google's hiring process.
PS:- Interviews should be taken for Selection not Rejection.
I came to know that Now Rippling has improved its Interview process, so let's see if someone gets a positive experience.