Interviews at Crossover

Crossover is a remote company. They recruit remotely via their platform and have an exclusive on-site interview process. Their on-site interview adheres to the following roadmap:

Figure 2.1 – Crossover interview roadmap

All steps are important, which means your responses at each step must pass their internal playbooks. If a step doesn't pass their internal playbooks, then it can lead to a sudden closure of the interview. But, the most important steps are steps 3, 5, 6, and 7. Step 3 represents an eliminatory Criteria Cognitive Aptitude Test (CCAT). For example, you have to answer 50 questions in 15 minutes. You have to answer correctly 25+ questions to have a chance to advance to the next step. If you are not familiar with CCAT tests, then it is strongly recommended to practice (there are books and websites dedicated to CCAT tests). Without serious practice, it will be quite challenging to pass it. If you are not a native English speaker, then you have to pay extra attention to practice the questions that require serious English skills.

At step 5, you'll get a quiz with technical questions. There are 30+ questions with 5 answer variants (one or more answers are correct). No coding is required at this step.

If you reach step 6, then you'll receive technical homework that should be completed in 3 hours and submitted (uploaded) to the platform. This homework can consist of one or more Java applications starting from a stub application provided via download.

At step 7, you'll finally meet a person via a phone screen. This is usually a mix of technical and non-technical questions.

The technical questions will cover a wide range of Java topics (collections, concurrency, I/O, exceptions, and so on).

Commonly, you'll receive the final response by e-mail in less than a week. Depending on the position, the offer will start with 1 month of paid boot camp experience. Note that after boot camp, you can still be rejected or required to apply again. During boot camp and after it, you'll have to maintain your position via weekly metrics that measure your performance. You'll have to work 40 hours/week with webcam screenshots every 10 minutes. And, you are responsible for arranging to pay your own taxes. Salaries are fixed and public on their website.

It is advisable to read the job description and testimonials on their website carefully. They also have brand ambassadors whom you can contact to find out more about the company culture, expectations, interview flow, and so on.

Other remote companies follow a three-step interview process. For example, Upstack follows this pattern:

1. Initial interview: Non-technical phone screen
2. Technical interview: Technical phone screen containing coding challenge
3. Offer: Sending you an offer and signing the agreement

Of course, there are many other big companies that are not listed here. But as a rule of thumb, the companies and their processes outlined here should give you some important insights into what you should expect from a big player in the IT industry.