I always see canonical postings on the stack overflow job board. I thought "hey maybe toss out my line, how bad could it be?"
Well I got past the initial glance at the resume and I received the most insane recruiting email I've ever seen.
After the initial screening, the next step is a written test, an aptitude(iq) test, and a personality test. The written test is anonymized to avoid bias. I'm just going to copy and paste these questions.
"The current stage is your written interview. Please take some time to answer the questions below. We’re looking to get a sense of who you are, what’s important to you, and how you communicate. If you’ve already completed this when applying for another role, please feel free to copy/paste from your previous submission.
Education
At high school, how did you fare in mathematics and physical sciences? Which were your strongest subjects in the hard sciences, and how did you rank in your class?
At high school, what leadership roles did you take on?
What course and university did you choose, and why?
How did you rank competitively in university? Which were your strongest courses, and which did you enjoy the most?
At high school and university, describe your achievements that were considered exceptional by colleagues and staff.
Career development
How would you describe your level of experience as a professional software engineer?
Describe your skill in your preferred development language, and how you attained it.
What are your strengths as a software engineer?
Experience
Describe your level of experience in Golang, and how you have attained it.
Describe your level of experience in Python, and how you have attained it.
When did you start working on Linux? Describe your level of experience as a user & developer on Linux.
Which SoC / platforms have you worked on?
Describe the embedded Linux products you worked on (purpose, market, etc.)
Describe your contributions to those projects (bootloader, kernel, userspace apps, etc.)
Describe your experience with systemd and init, boot and initramfs
Describe your experience with embedded Linux graphics
Describe your experience working with bluetooth and networking
How do you debug very low-level issues in boot, the kernel, and firmware?
How do you address software performance, systematically, in your products and in your software engineering practices?
How do you prefer to drive documentation for your products?
How do you think about quality in your products?
Describe a case where it was very difficult to test code you were writing, but you found a reliable way to do it.
If available, provide your public github/gitlab repository links
If available, provide your personal blog/website links
If available, provide your professional Youtube channel
What would you like to achieve in career development and skills development?
Context
How are you involved in open source software?
Describe any significant contributions to open source (with links where possible)
What do you think are the key ingredients of a successful open source project?
Why you most want to work for Canonical?
Which other companies are building the sort of products you would like to work on?
Describe pros/cons of Ubuntu Core
Describe areas for improvement in Ubuntu Core
What do you think Canonical needs to improve in its engineering and products?
What do you think is the biggest opportunity for Canonical in this arena?
Who do you think are key competitors to Canonical? How do you think Canonical should plan to win that race?
"
The most bizarre thing is they're asking about my grades/ranking in high school. Dude I'm applying for a job, not babby's first internship.
Its no surprise that a company that isn't that big has constant and numerous postings online. They're obviously actively hostile to their applicants and set on wasting as much time as possible.
Irony is Canonical is an English company :england-cool:
It does make sense now why there's always so many postings on jobs boards.
I do interviews at my current company. Typically we have a three step process, 1-recruiter calls and chats, make sure you exist and line up with the resume, 2-engineers do a short screen to make sure you're not lying about your resume to make it fiscally worth it for the 3rd interview, and 3-(pre-covid) we'd fly them in for an in person, pay for a hotel, and interview them for about an hour and a half, the first thirty minutes being a presentation the candidate put together of some gameified challenges.
Typically we don't care if they come to us and say "listen I didn't have much time for all these challenges so I did a few that interested me". Its mostly used to gauge problem solving skills.
I understand the need for a standardized interview process, because companies can get in trouble for showing weird favoritism, ie some people need challenges and others need a handshake and a nod. Its a difficult line to walk, vetting a candidate because you don't want to waste their time and emotionally traumatize them in the interview, but you also want to make sure they're a good fit and wont leave or be fired after 5 months because it turns out they hate the work and know nothing about it.
Ah so it's a British thing too? I guess either we don't have that many steps in Australia or it's just because I've only ever done minimum wage jobs but I've never experienced that.
Pretty cool that you pay for them to come out.
Yeah, now with Covid, its all over video and makes the experience a bit worse for all involved.
A lot of tech jobs often will ship you out for in person interviews, often times by the time you get to that stage its less technical and more about personality so it helps to sweeten the deal with some comped flights and hotels.
It certainly wow'd me when I first experienced it but the actual experience of the job doesn't maintain that high.
Basically in certain industries, the higher skilled folks are very hard to keep around and management never wants to pay what they're worth, so its a cat and mouse game of attracting talent. Shit like the canonical interview process wouldn't fly for most experienced engineers I know.
Do you know much about the visa sponsoring situation? I'm a eu citizen looking to find a data engineering position in the UK and a bit anxious about how difficult it is to get one! I'm planning on moving next year so still have some time but just wondering what your experiences are.
Oh I'm sorry, I have no idea about all that. I'm a US citizen and Canonical has offices in the US so I wouldn't have to worry about any of that even if I went forward with the process.
I hope someone on here has some wisdom for you. My heart goes out to the homies who need visa sponsorship. I had a friend/ TA who started out loving machine intelligence stuff and it landed him a job at Nvidia with visa sponsorship but by the time he graduated he absolutely hated it to the core but had no choice but to keep with it if he didn't want to be shipped off on the first boat back to Bangladesh.
Thanks anyway for the help! Hope your job search goes well :)
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I became friends with one of the guys who interviewed me after I started.
He later explained to me I held an uncomfortable amount of eye contact throughout the whole interview. I've been told I'm a mix of charismatic but incredibly autistic at times, which I think lends itself well to interviews that are more open ended and conversational, but I stumble on my words during technical questions because I have a shit memory and can't recall terminology on the spot.
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