A recruiter reached out to me via LinkedIn. I first spoke with a recruiter for a 30 minute phone screen that dove into my experience. Before our conversation ended they stated that they will schedule a call with the hiring manager. This was another phone screen that dove deeper into my experience and technological background. It felt relaxed, even though I was meeting with a manager. Third step was doing a case study with a peer. The goal here is to see how much you have learned about databases and familiarize yourself with the types of use cases on the job. This felt way more casual than I expected and it was a great conversation all around. A few hours later, the recruiter followed up to schedule a final interview with the hiring manager, director, and peer from your case study. You’re provided with a deck template and are conducting a discovery/onboarding call with a new client. This presentation consists of asking discovery questions and spinning up a MongoDB Atlas cluster. After the presentation 10 minutes is reserved for feedback. I got a lot of great feedback on my meeting hygiene, discovery questions, and overall technological aptitude. However, I didn’t spend enough time at the beginning of the meeting with building rapport and fumbled during the Altas Demo. I heard back from the recruiter within a day and they let me know that they would not be offering a position. Although I didn’t receive an offer, the interview process was great and took roughly 2-3 weeks. Many other companies are making you go through 6 interview rounds over two months, so the fact that this was quicker was nice. However, I do wish that mock presentations weren’t part of the interview process. It involves hours and hours of preparation for a mock scenario when you still don’t know how to use a product. I feel like these are skills that can be honed in while on the job.

Applied for Senior EMEA CSM role. The process ran about 2-3 months across four stages: an HR screen, an interview with the hiring manager covering the role and standard CSM questions, a peer interview with general questions on databases and cloud-native infrastructure, and a final challenge. The first three stages were standard and fairly run. The interviewers were professional and the conversations were positive. My main feedback concerns the final challenge. You deliver a presentation to a fictitious customer, with one prep call beforehand, then present to a panel role-playing different customer roles. The exercise is framed as a client meeting, but it functions as a high-stakes role play: candidates have limited prep time and, coming from outside the company, little familiarity with MongoDB's tech. That combination makes it quite different from a real client meeting, where you would have product knowledge and more context. I have no issue with not being selected, that is part of the process. What I found disappointing was the closing feedback: it was generic enough to fit a first-round rejection, and when I asked for something more specific after investing in a multi-month process, my request went unanswered. Overall, a thorough and professional process, but I would encourage more proportionate and transparent feedback for candidates who reach the final stages.