It was a standard process of a phone screen, to hiring manager interview, to 6 part virtual onsite. The questions were about leadership, platform specific knowledge and previous management experience. Everything was good and normal until I spoke to the SVP that I needed to contact my recruiter to ping so he could show up over 20 minutes after the scheduled time for him to be completely unengaged, checking his phone throughout the entire process and asking questions I had already answered several times.

This was one of the best experiences I've had in ages- really a career highlight. And I didn’t even get the job! Every conversation with the technical recruiter was an absolute joy. They had a fantastic ability to engage with me as a person and suss out the various signals they needed to really get a sense of whether or not I actually would be a good fit for the role and the organization. Instead of tedious, rote questions (hey, what's your favorite thing you've ever built? huh?), we just had a conversation. As the process moved forward, they did a great job with setting clear expectations and were always responsive. Being treated like a human is something I value highly (wait, is that weird?), so this personal approach really hit all the right notes for me. But wait, there's more! My conversations with engineering leadership were equally enjoyable. By about the 2 minute mark in my first conversation with the hiring manager, I'd already decided that this is somebody I wanted to work with/for. And not an isolated case, turns out engineering at The RealReal is comprised of interesting humans with a broad range of experiences. You very quickly get the impression that diversity of thought is valued, and you aren’t being assessed solely on arbitrary technical knowledge, but how your strengths and weaknesses (because we all have 'em) as an engineer, as a manager, and as a person compliment those of the rest of the team. There’s a strong top-down focus on culture and it really shows. Also- the entire process is quick! Basically 2 weeks, including a holiday, from initial contact to final debrief. Want to sit about for 6 weeks wondering what’s going on? This isn’t the place for you! Sounds amazing, so why didn’t I land the job? I know the answer to that too, because the recruiter doesn’t just fire off that generic HR kiss-off email, they schedule a call and give you thoughtful feedback on what was great and what was not so great. It turned out that I left the interview panel with the impression that I didn’t care much about a particular facet of engineering that I’m actually very passionate about. But being able to successfully communicate these things is a pretty basic function of a good EM, and so it was a very fair criticism. Frankly, it’s an absolute shame that hiring in our industry is so broken that experiences like this are so rare. But these folks are doing it right, and really the only disappointing aspect of this process is that I don’t get to work with these people every day- but maybe you will!