Feddas - Shawn Featherly

I recently had the honor of interviewing for a developer position at Nintendo in Redmond, WA. The first step was a 1 hour phone interview. They went over the details about the job. They also did an over the phone algorithmic coding exercise using http://www.codeshare.io as a shared session. Less than an hour afterwards I was informed that I succeeded at the 1 hour phone interview and was scheduled for both a half-day in-person interview and a 30 minute tentative follow-up interview. The in-person, half-day, interview: You start by talking to an HR rep for 10 minutes. Then you spend each hour with a different person. When they swap they confer privately with each other for a couple minutes. Each person asks you an programming question in a different manner; white board programming, heads down programming with internet, and paired programming with internet. The questions aren't that hard. Yet, personally, I had time issues. The white board programming seemed to focus around typical algorithmic interview questions. The other two were based on the tech requirements of the job description. Which for me was Xaml. So was working on binding to commands and collections stored in a ViewModel. The last interview was with the same individual that gave the phone interview. Talking a little bit about how things went with the previous 3 people and asking general programming questions. Some discussion about the next step, which is when you'll find out if you'll attend the tentative follow-up interview. Then you're seen to the door. This was the last step of the interview process for me. My "didn't make it" moment: I have a feeling they've had some incidents when telling people they feel they're not a right fit. As when the HR rep left a voice mail the next morning about if I should come into the tentative interview he used the words "he had to cancel". Which to me initially meant reschedule. Then I tried to call back, to no avail. I decided to email the Recruiting Coordinator, who nicely forwarded my email. After a couple hours I still didn't hear anything back from the HR rep and I realized "he had to cancel" must of meant "we don't think you're the right fit". In retrospect, it's likely the last person I saw during the in-person interview would of told me if it was positive news. Yet, being it was negative, he likely wanted to make sure I was out of the building. So, don't worry about it while they wait to call you back. If you're worried about losing some sleep, ask if you can schedule the tentative interview with them after the in-person interview is completed.

Labels: Interview, Nintendo