After meeting ThoughtWorks at a job fair and giving them my CV I was contacted about the role of UI Developer and went through a telephone screening. I was then asked to complete a technical test. The technical test was a significant piece of work that took a couple of days. I was given a scamp / Design wireframe and requested to make this into a production-ready, responsive, cross-browser, static web page using HTML and CSS considering the visual design. For “bonus points” I was asked to make the page accessible. I was then invited into a technical interview. The recruitment team took almost a week to set up the interview and told me two days before on the Wednesday that my interview would be on a Friday and would take a half-day. I advised that I could not book off time at such short notice and we agreed that I would come in for an hour in the morning. I was being interviewed by a JavaScript developer and head of the development team. The interview started with a short introduction into my background, my technical test was then put up onto a shared screen. I was asked to change some CSS and Javascript using one of the interviewer’s laptops. This unnerved me, firstly I was being asked to use an unfamiliar machine without even an introduction to what was setup and what was being used. Secondly, I was very confused to why I was being asked to debug JS when I had completed the UI element of the technical test. There were a lot of JS questions I struggled with as IMHO this wasn't the role I applied for. My work then continued to be being critiqued and I was, quite rightly, questioned to why one of my labels was not linked to an input field. I was then asked about different MV* frameworks, AJAX and then we returned to talking about different browsers and Sass. There were no questions on UX, interactive design, accessibility, visual Design, Photoshop or prototyping which I found very strange. I was asked to rate my skillset which I also found a little odd as I completed a comprehensive spider diagram before the interview and my CV is detailed with this information. I felt like a lot of my information was not read and the preparation for this interview was somewhat last minute. It was also evident that the readme from my technical test had not even been glanced at. A couple of questions were worded badly, it was difficult to understand what the ‘real technical question’ was. Several times this didn’t make sense to me until it was repeated by the other interviewer in a different manner. I was deeply disappointed at this interview, I felt like what the job spec and technical test requested were very different from how I was being questioned. I also felt the technical test was a very large upfront investment on my part when I wasn’t 100% sure that ThoughtWorks would be a good fit. Investing two days into a technical test is now a massive red flag in my mind, I will not be doing this again for any company. A technical test should take a couple of hours maximum.

It was quite a lengthy process but it's very good. I had 5 interviews in total. 1. Initial chat with HR 2. Pairing interview 3. Technical Test 4. Cultural Fit Interview 5. Leadership Interview Each interviewer was very kind, they guide me along the interview especially during the pairing and the technical test. It's important for you to understand TDD and clean code. You'd also have to understand the language that you're going to code with, because in the technical test, they would ask a bit of theory in there