How we hire new graduates in TradeGecko
Why we hire new graduates
As we’ve matured as a company, one core value that continues to stand out to us is for us to constantly inspire and be inspired. We believe in our responsibility to groom and grow the next generation of new graduates in Singapore to be the best software engineers and continue making an impact to the tech ecosystem. We also believe that the infusion of new blood into TradeGecko will allow us to be inspired by new ideas that we may not have thought of before.
Our interview process
We have a three part interview process that can be completed in less than two days.
- Those who qualify after a resume screen will be invited for an initial conversation with two people from either Engineering, Product or Design. This is an opportunity to assess a mutual fit. We may have a discussion about your past projects, and we might whiteboard together with you.
- After going through the initial screen, we will give you an opportunity to showcase your technical prowess through a technical exercise.
- The last part of the interview will assess your culture fit — this is your opportunity to learn about our culture and how we solve problems together as a team!
What we assess
Technical prowess:
We care less about which school your degree was from or your current GPA. What we care about is your ability to dissect a technical problem, develop a solution, and articulate why you went with a particular solution. You may be asked to do a coding exercise, pair with us for half a day, or walk us through some code that you’ve written in the past.
Passion for Technology
What we care about is that you’ve excelled in the things that you’ve picked up. If your favorite course was a Human Computer Interaction class, we want to hear all about it and how you were technically challenged. We also want to hear all about that side project that you’ve built while you were in school to try out a new language.
We care about your passion for technology because that’s the bread and butter of how TradeGecko engineers operate. You can expect to see engineers tinkering with new technologies in the evenings or weekends to learn about how they can apply this to problems inside and outside of work. We actively contribute to open source projects (e.g. a couple of us work on HospitalRun.io). Engineers that experiment and try new technologies will inspire others to think differently and outside of the box.
Customer Centricity & Product Sense
One of our values in TradeGecko is for every employee to be Customer Obsessed. What that means is that we expect every engineer, designer, product manager, and support advocate to empathize and care about getting our customers to their desired outcomes.
One of the questions which we’ve used to assess this (since retired) was “How would you design a doorknob?”. The design of the question was intentionally vague that it forced the candidate to dig deep into who we’re solving the problem for, what their key challenges are, and how we can design a solution that can truly make their lives better. Candidates who were able to disect this vague problem would have learned that we were looking for a solution that allowed AirBnB hosts to remotely manage their household and allow guests to come in and out as they pleased.
Intellectual Horsepower (IHP)
We firmly believe that everyone is coachable in their technical skills. However, what we lookout for is a baseline level of intellectual horsepower to handle complex and vague problems that are thrown your way. Most of the problems that you’ll see as an engineer in TradeGecko are vague and open-ended. Having enough IHP to take you through the day-to-day is a key part of the job.
Throughout your interview process, we’ll be challenging you to think outside of your comfort zone and giving you hypothetical scenarios which you’ll have to break down, analyze, and build a solution for.
Culture fit
A big part of the interview is for you to meet other team members (perhaps some in Sales, Marketing, and our Executives).
In these sessions, we’re assessing you on our five values:
You’ll be expected to share a little more about how your past experiences have reflected some of these values which we hold dear. We want to learn about when the last the last time was that you learned a new skill or taught someone something you were passionate about. We also want to hear about how you went above your call of duty to get something done when you weren’t told to do that specifically.
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About the author
Yi-Wei is the Director of Product at TradeGecko, and is responsible for hiring new graduate software engineers and product managers. Interested to work with us? Drop him a line at yiwei.ang@tradegecko.com
