Interviewing with AI@Unity
During any interview process, it’s normal for you to have a few questions. We know interviewing can be stressful, and can sometimes feel like a full-time job itself! We want to take some of that stress away and make sure every candidate goes into our interview process feeling as comfortable and prepared as possible. While the interview process may vary depending on the role and team you’re interviewing with, this interview guide will provide a high-level overview of what you can expect your interview process to look like. But, of course, be sure to speak with your recruiter to get a more specific overview of what your interview process will look like for the role you’re interviewing for!
Remote Interviewing Tips During Covid-19
First off, while we would love nothing more than to meet you in person, give you an office tour, and share a cup of tea, the safety and health of you and our employees is our first priority — so your interviews will likely be conducted over phone or zoom for the foreseeable future (with a raincheck on the tea).
With that in mind, we have a few tips for interviewing remotely:
- Ensure that you have a stable internet or phone connection, depending on the format of your interview
- For whiteboard interviews, our teams are using a variety of solutions, including Codility’s Canvas feature or Zoom’s Whiteboard feature, depending on interviewer preference. The platforms are fairly similar, but if you expect to do some whiteboarding in your interviews, familiarizing yourself with both tools couldn’t hurt!
- Try to find a quiet and private area. However, if you expect there may be unavoidable ambient noise or environmental disruptions during your interview, let your interviewer know at the top of your meeting — we’re all still adjusting to a world of remote work and promise not to hold this against you in the interview process, but knowing in advance if there may be some interruptions is helpful.
- Most importantly: keep your recruiter updated! Need to reschedule your interview because of a WFH issue? Let us know when you’re available next. Having technical difficulties with zoom? We’ll put on our IT hat and try to figure it out with you. Not sure if whiteboarding is part of your interview process? Ask us!
Recruiter Phone Screen
Most interview processes at Unity begin by having a phone call with a member of our Recruiting Team to talk about a specific role. During this call, you will get to share your career interests, projects you’ve worked on, and general experience so that we can figure out if there’s a good fit between your background and positions we have available! We’ll also use this call to gather some essential HR information, such as your location, inclination to relocate, and timeline for interviewing. There’s no need to prepare anything deeply technical for this first step aside from your general work history and career interests.
After your initial conversation with a Recruiter or Recruiting Sourcer on the team, a member of our recruiting will be in touch about potential next steps within a few days.
Technical Screens
During the technical phone screen portion of the interview process, you’ll get to speak with either the hiring manager or a potential teammate. This conversation will focus on your experience, interests, technical expertise, and other topics that may be relevant to the role. This can be done over the phone or via Zoom, but if you have a strong preference, please let your recruiter know.
The questions you’re asked will vary depending on the role you’re interviewing for. For example, if you’re interviewing for a Software Development role, you might expect some questions about previous products or services you’ve worked on, problems you encountered during the development cycle, or what fields of software development you’d like to move your career into.
If you’re interviewing for a Software Development role, there’s a very good chance we may also ask you to complete a take-home coding challenge. For a majority of our software roles, we’ll send you a timed coding challenge via Codility, and provide more details about what this challenge will focus on once we get to this stage!
Onsite Interview
Congratulations, you’ve made it to the onsite interview! As mentioned above, all of your interviews will be conducted via zoom for the foreseeable future, so these interviews won’t literally be “onsite”, but at this stage, you’ll have the opportunity to meet some of your potential teammates. Below is an outline of what you might expect, but don’t forget that our recruiting team is here as a resource to answer any questions you might have about your interviews with us!
Each interview will be focused on a specific competency relevant to the role, but you can expect a combination of technical and behavioral discussions throughout the day.
For instance, if you are interviewing for a Reinforcement Learning Engineering role, you might expect that some interviews will focus on your experience with Reinforcement or Deep Learning projects, others to assess your coding skills, and other interviews to focus on your approaches and experience collaborating with other Engineers.
Again — don’t be afraid to ask questions! Interviewing is a two-way street: while the interviews are an opportunity for us to get a sense of your expertise and experience, it’s also an opportunity for you to get to know us and investigate more deeply whether this is a team, project, or product that aligns with your career goals.
Reference Checks
In the event that our team and you think there’s a good match, the next step is reference checks! Typically we ask for 2 former or current peers and 2 former or current managers. However, we understand that asking current colleagues to be a reference might be uncomfortable or that you may be earlier on in your career and not have 4 references available — if this is the case or you have other concerns, let your recruiter know and we’ll work with you to see what our options are. For students, sometimes an internship manager or academic advisor may be sufficient.
What now?
If you’ve completed everything this far — that’s awesome!
We appreciate you sticking with us through the interview process and taking the time to meet with everybody on our team. We hope you’ve finished the interview process with a greater understanding of the role and more excitement around the prospect of joining our team.
You should be hearing back from your recruiter within a week of your interviews, but if you think of any questions in the meantime, please don’t hesitate to reach out! We’ll try to get a decision to you as soon as possible.
While you wait, be sure to head over to our website and read through our blog and recent press. Check us out on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn as well!
If you haven’t already applied or are interested in exploring other positions at Unity, check out our careers page!
