Feb 24, 2021
Insider Tips: How to Prepare for Your Interview at Perlego
Congrats! You’ve scored yourself an interview for a career at Perlego… now what?
We know interviewing is daunting, so we want to help reduce the stress by giving you some inside tips on what to expect and how to prepare.
How to prepare for your first interview
1. Check out our product
Perlego is a mission-driven, product-first business — no matter what role you’re interviewing for an understanding of both how the product works and how we’re helping students is a must. So play around on both our web app and our mobile app (you’ll be amazed at how many people don’t do this prior to the first stage).
💡 PRO TIPS
Bonus points for any comments or suggestions on product improvements highlighted through the interview process
2. Learn about our culture
Culture is consistently voted as one of the top 3 most loved reasons for working at Perlego, so if you’re like us finding the right fit is incredibly important in selecting your next role.
Culture can be a buzz-word, to help frame what culture means to Perlego we see it as 3 core ingredients;
- What we believe — our core values and principles that underpin our day-to-day
- How we work — the environment we curate for our team to thrive
- How we interact — how we collaborate and celebrate together
💡 PRO TIPS
- Read about our mission, values & principles
- Read our Glassdoor reviews
- Read our Otta reviews
- Read what a day in the life of a Perlego Engineer looks like
- Watch this video 👇🏽
3. Be yourself
Interviews can be stressful for many reasons, but trying to be someone you’re not shouldn’t be one of them.
We value diversity & our team is representative of that — we have over 26 cultures, a good mix of men, women, and non-binary people, a range of experiences from recent grads to industry heavyweights, and all sorts of passions, interests, and hobbies.
Ultimately, we want people who believe in our mission, who love our product, and who want to be the best they can be at their job, whilst working with a team they respect.
💡 PRO TIP
- Be yourself 🙂
The interview process: what to expect
We are committed to creating a fair and inclusive interview process, so we like to keep it as streamline and light-touch as possible. Our process usually happens in 4 steps:
☎️ Step 1 — Short Zoom interview with our Talent Team
Who is it with?
The first phone call is usually led by our amazing Talent Team
- Your first call will usually be with our Senior Talent Partner, Ben
Sometimes if we’re super busy with hiring great people we’ll ask one of our peers to jump in and take the first call. Don’t worry, if this is the case we’ll let you know in the email prior 🙂
How long does it take?
Approximately 30mins — however sometimes this can be longer depending on the role.
What’s the goal?
- To help you learn more about Perlego & the role
- Help us better understand your skills and experience
💬 Step 2 — Zoom interview with the manager
Who is it with?
Usually, this will be led by the manager of the role, however, depending on availability this could be a peer from the team instead.
How long does it take?
Approximately 30–45mins
What’s the goal?
- To help us get a deeper understanding of your technical skills and experience → we usually ask more situational and technical questions, asking you to dig deeper into your past experiences that are relevant to the role
- Help us understand what you’re looking for in your next role and how we can help you grow
- Opportunity for you to ask any questions directly to the manager you’ll be working with
✏️ Step 3 — Case-study / Task stage
For all our roles we do a case-study or practical task so we can see your capabilities in action. We believe this is important as interviews aren’t always the best format to assess your skills, this helps us to get a more well-rounded view of how you’ll approach the role. (You can read more about our thoughts on why we do this for Design roles as an example here).
Who is it with?
Just you.
We will send you the case-study / task and give you between a few days to a week+ to prepare.
How long does it take?
We try to build all our practical tasks to be completed within a few hours.
We want it to be enough for you to show your ability but not too long that it precludes those who aren’t able to find time to complete (for example people with caregiving responsibilities, those who are doing night study, etc.)
If you’re struggling to find the time— not a problem, just let us know — we can work on an alternative approach to accommodate.
What’s the goal?
See your real capabilities in action 🙂
📣 Step 4 — Final interview with the team
Who is it with?
This will change depending on the role, but usually, it’s between 3–4 people in the Perlego team;
Typically it includes:
- Your (future) manager
- A team member you’ll be working with
- One of our senior management team members
- Someone from our culture crew (a handful of cross-functional Perlego team members who are champions of our culture)
How long does it take?
Approximately 1 hour
What’s the goal?
- The opportunity for you to talk through and explain your task, how you approached it, challenges you had, etc.
- The opportunity for the team to meet you and have an open discussion. This will be a mixture of questions on your past experience, your approach to the task, what you’re most excited about in the role, etc.
- Most importantly, the opportunity for you to interview us! Ask us any questions you like, we want to ensure we’re the right fit for you too
🥳 Step 5 — Get an offer and join us at Perlego
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Hope that helps to remove a little bit of the stress ahead of the first interview.
🍀 Good luck! We’re sure you’ll do great!
Want to do some further research to prepare? Here are a few useful books:
💬 Great Answers to Tough Interview Questions
Haven’t applied yet? Don’t miss your chance — we are currently looking for talented humans to join our team 👀
