How I landed a senior engineering position at a hyper-growth startup

In 2020, I landed interviews at several startups and tech companies. I was nervous because I had never done an “official” interview in my life 🤯

Yes, you read that right…. 7 yrs in software engineering, and I’d never been through an official interview. All my other jobs had come from word of mouth referrals.

Going into these interviews I knew I might not be the most experienced candidate at interviewing… So I knew I would have to stand out from the other candidates some other way. 🤔

I would need to stand out based on my research, skills and preparation.

One of the startups I applied for was named Wisely. It was a restaurant tech startup I found on AngelList.

They were remote, used technologies I had a lot of experience with (Vue.js/Node.js/SQL), and they paid more than some other companies I was looking at.

I wasn’t sure how large they were, but their products looked super innovative, so I went in thinking their open position would be pretty competitive.

I decided to go all out during their 7 rounds of interviews. 💪

Research phase

I dove into researching the company before my first interview round, and put some of what I learned into a cover letter I submitted with my resume.

I researched:

• The founders’ background, contact info, and what they were passionate about

• The startup, their current employees, their positions

• Their apps, and what unique needs their products were solving

• Their funding rounds, and what kind of runway they might have

• The actual job, what the expectations were, comp, benefits, etc.

I learned as much as possible about the company so they could tell I did my research, and I would be able to speak their language. I wanted to stand out from others who were simply applying without researching the company extensively.

The 30 hr take home project

After an initial interview with their co-founder, they sent me a coding take home challenge.

The take home assignment was to build a restaurant app that could be used by restaurant owners to setup available reservation blocks (times and quantities). These reservations would then be available for customers to book.

I built out a beautifully designed frontend in Vue.js, with forms for creating/modifying/deleting a reservation, validation, toasts, etc.

For the backend, I built out RESTful API endpoints in Node.js. I made sure the code was clean, well organized, had a service layer for the business logic, used their preferred database ORM Sequelize, had good error handling, etc.

I wanted them to see what I could do on a real project. I tried to build the app 80-90% of the way to the standard of what I would expect in a production app. I ran out of time to add tests like I wanted, but overall I was really happy with it.

I ended up spending 30 hrs working on it.

I worked from 10pm-2am several nights, and throughout the weekend 😅

After reviewing my code, they asked me a bunch of questions around performance and scaling. After it was all said and done – they said my code was the best they had seen. 👏

I found out later most people spent 4-8 hrs on the project. 😳

Relationship building

It’s often been said: It takes 7 points of contact to make a sale.

I knew interviewing would be similar and I wanted to have as many as possible relationship building touch points with their team.

Every time I finished a round of interviewing, I would ask what the next steps would look like if I did move forward, and send a follow up thank you email.

I found out one of the rounds would be a “whiteboarding style” interview.

I was a little nervous, so I asked for a general outline of what topics it would focus on. They sent me a general overview of what to expect, and I studied up on my data modeling and performance knowledge before that interview.

I wanted it to be a relationship back and forth throughout the process, rather than going into interviews in the dark, and bombing because I was nervous.

Throughout the whole process I kept in touch with the co-founder who was running the hiring process for this position.

I reiterated how excited I was about the company, the team, and the problems they were solving for their customers.

I also quickly followed up if they ever asked questions, and sent follow up emails of my own if I was ever unclear on what the next steps were.

Getting the job

I ended up beating out hundreds of applicants and people they interviewed because I went above and beyond in every stage of the process.

I still remember the day their co-founder texted I got the job 🎉

I joined Wisely in August 2020 as a senior software engineer.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had joined a 🚀-ship company.

Wisely would go on to 3x their income 3 years in a row, and grow faster than Zoom during 2020/21. 🤯🚀

Wisely was acquired in Nov. 2021, for $187,000,000 and I was one of 8 engineers who was on that wild ride!

Moral of the story?

Other candidates may beat your interviewing experience and resume/qualifications.

But don't let them beat your research, preparation and work ethic. 🤝

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How do you approach interviewing in a way that makes you stand out from hundreds of other applicants?

I’d love to hear any stories or tips you have.

Until next week 👇🏼

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