I was given a take-home assessment after being shortlisted. The brief I received beforehand described the exercise as: A fairly straightforward SQL task with a clear right/wrong answer. A system diagram that I would review and answer questions about (free-form). A failing test case where I would refactor code to make the test pass. Overall, these sounded like standard and reasonable tasks. In practice, however, the assessment differed somewhat from the description: The SQL portion was as expected. Instead of reviewing a provided system diagram, I was asked to design an API involving external services and justify my design decisions. Rather than simply refactoring to make a failing test pass, I was given a larger API project where part required refactoring and an additional endpoint needed to be implemented. None of these tasks were inherently unreasonable. The main issue was the timeframe: the entire assessment was limited to 90 minutes. Given the scope SQL, API design, refactoring, implementing an endpoint, and producing a system diagram (in Hackerrank’s diagramming UI) the time constraint felt unrealistic. My concern wasn’t the technical difficulty, but rather that the time allocation didn’t seem aligned with the scope of the tasks, and the exercise differed from what had been described upfront. A slightly longer timeframe or clearer expectations would have made the experience feel more balanced.

1. Had an initial HR phone call with Sharron Riddle 2. Had a technical interview with two senior engineers 3. 2 front end challenges one of them was to fix a HTML page with some CSS broken parts. The other challenge was a JavaScript challenge where I had to write tic-tac-toe from scratch and write some front end tests in jest to test the code. I had two developers watching me. It was very difficult because I wasn't allowed to use chat GPT co-pilot any kind of intellisense or internet. I don't think I did very well on that round at all but they said they would let me know in one week's time. I didn't hear from them in six weeks so I assumed I never got the job, but then I got a phone call to say I had got the job. I was surprised about this. The reason they hadn't given me any feedback for six weeks was because of the financial year end. I have to say that Sharron Riddle was excellent throughout the process very supportive, communicative, friendly and knowledgeable. I can't wait to start at ASOS. It sounds like a great company and everybody I spoke to on all those rounds were really friendly. There was also a final round with more behavioral questions in total I think that was about three hours of interviews.

I had an initial conversation with their hiring manager who was very helpful and enthusiastic. This was followed up with an informal 30 minute phone interview with a non-technical engineering manager. They didn't bother getting back to me after that.