Demystifying Mobimeo Tech Interviews
Let’s face it, tech interviews can be stressful and difficult to prepare for. Should you prepare for back-of-the-envelope calculations? Should you prepare to explain Bayesian Hyperparameter Optimization like you would to a five year old? Should you wear sneakers? In this post, we’ll go through the Mobimeo recruiting process from submitting your application all the way to receiving an offer.
Position seems cool, but do I have to stop procrastinating and write a cover letter?
Cover letters aren’t necessary. Actually, you can even leave out the CV if you’d rather send us your LinkedIn profile. Naturally, we’d be psyched if you decided to share a GitHub repo with samples of your work.
Do I need to speak German?
Probably not. At Mobimeo, our company language is English. For some positions, for example those that include customer communications, German skills are also required. For engineering positions, German skills are not required. Aber, if you’re interested in learning German, Mobimeo offers you the chance to do so; more on that and other employee benefits will be covered in a following post.
Do I need to live in Berlin to apply?
Nope. Mobimeo has locations in both Berlin and Hamburg. If you don’t live in Germany, we can assist you with relocation, including getting all the documents together that you might need for your visa application.
Does Mobimeo offer part-time positions?
Yes. Feel free to get in touch with any questions you may have about a particular position.
Ok, I submitted my application. Now what?
Applications land in the inbox of our People & Organization (P&O) team. In addition to being thrilled to receive your application, you can expect our P&O team to get in touch within about three working days. If any questions come up in the meantime, you can feel free to get in touch with the team at jobs@mobimeo.com. Next comes the interview phase.
How many interviews are we talking about here?
Before receiving an offer, you can expect to have about four interviews. This way, we’re able to include multiple perspectives in the hiring process: P&O, hiring managers, tech leads, engineers, and future teammates. Also, we want to empower future colleagues to have enough impressions of our organization to be able to confidently decide whether Mobimeo would be a good fit.
But there’s no need to stress about rushing across town for on-site interviews straight away; the first interview is a video call with the P&O team. This first call is a chance to get to know each other, learn more about your background, motivation, expectations, and potential starting date. Our P&O team will give you a company overview, and you’ll have a chance to ask questions you might have about Mobimeo.
You can expect to hear back from the P&O team within about two to three days. The next stop on this hiring train is the department interview, which involves a call with the hiring manager for that particular department. After checking out your profile and code samples, some of your future colleagues will be eager to meet you! This is your chance to get into the details of the tech stack, ask questions, and learn more about the department’s goals, requirements, and working style.
What should I wear?
We’re casual. No need to dress up. Unless you really want to. You do you.
Let’s get to the good stuff; what’s the technical interview like?
In preparation for the technical interview, you’ll receive a take-home challenge. In general, you should expect to spend a maximum of about 4 hours of your time on this task. Deadlines for take-home challenges are flexible and up to you. We value the time and effort that all applicants put into the coding challenges, so just let us know when you plan to be finished.
If you’ve sent us your GitHub profile, then we will already have had a chance to get familiar with your work. For certain positions, it could be the case that applicants have plenty of public examples of their work, which are also similar to the take-home challenges. In that situation, we might skip the take-home challenge and instead focus the technical interview on the examples you’ve already provided to us.
Once you’ve completed the task, you will be invited to meet with a group of engineers and technical leads to talk about your submission. This chat will involve walking us through your code, explaining your decisions, and using this as a basis for discussion on technical topics relevant to the position. We use this to see how well you can explain your code, what architecture and styles you prefer, and how you would interact with the other engineers. Additionally we use the chance to dig down on some technical topics. What do coroutines do? What is SOLID? Sometimes we also use the chance to just keep chatting about current and upcoming changes in our tech landscape, and how they would impact us.
Can I meet the rest of the team?
Totally! The final interview is all about meeting the team. You can expect an informal vibe; your future colleagues are interested to get to know you and answer any questions you may have.
Are we meeting in person in these interviews or is it remote?
Like most companies, Mobimeo has shifted to more remote working. This also goes for the interview process. For the technical interview, you should be prepared to share your screen while going through your response to the take-home challenge.
When will I hear back?
After the final interview, you can expect to hear from us within three working days. The timeline for the entire hiring process depends on multiple schedules, including the team members involved in the interviews and your timeline for completing the take-home challenge, so it’s difficult to say how long it will take from start to finish. On average, the process takes anywhere from two to four weeks from submitting an application to receiving an offer.
How can I get the inside scoop on what it’s like to work at Mobimeo?
Stay tuned for the next post in this series.
You can find all our open positions here.
