For engineering candidates

How to succeed during Shapr3D's engineering hiring process

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re thinking of applying to Shapr3D - or maybe already have - which is really exciting! 🚀 Here's a handy guide to our engineering interview process, to help you nail the interview rounds with confidence.

What are we looking for during the interview process?

Our recruitment mission is to build a world-class engineering team to develop an iconic, mobile-first CAD app for the 21st century. Our interview process is designed to help us understand each candidate’s values, engineering principles and experience, and to find evidence for whether they can successfully contribute to this effort in the long run.

What makes someone successful at Shapr3D?

The most important values that Shapr3D software engineers have in common are their commitment to lifelong learning and dedication to excellence. We are building a CAD software product, tackling one of the most complex engineering problems out there. We aspire to do things that no one has done before and we have the ambition to disrupt an industry that has not changed in the last 30 years.

Solving problems in our domain requires in-depth knowledge of computer architecture, operating systems and computer science - which we assess across multiple stages of our interview process. In each round we give you insights into how we work at Shapr3D, and also gather information about how you might fit into the company's journey going forward.

The tl;dr version of our typical interview process, goes like this:

Infographic
Shapr3D engineering interview steps

And step-by-step it goes like this:

1. Application

The first step is the application form. Here we ask you to include your CV, detailing your past experience and achievements. We’re also super interested in your pet projects or in contributions to open-source projects. Depending on the position you are applying for, we might also include some role related questions.

What kind of info should I include in my application?

2. Intro chat

If our hiring team thinks your skills and experience might be a good fit, they’ll schedule a short chat to introduce you to Shapr3D and get to know you a bit better. This will probably be run by a tech recruiter via Google Hangouts or Zoom and take  between 30 to 45 minutes. You won’t need to prepare anything in advance.

We’ll talk through your experience in more detail, about your stack background, and why you’re interested in joining us. You’ll also be able to ask us any questions you might have and we'll align at this stage on possible next steps.

How do I nail the intro screening call?

3. Homework

If we’re aligned in the intro call, we’ll give you a take home technical exercise customized as per the role you applied for. This test allows you to showcase your technical skills using your preferred tools. As it is a customized exercise by our engineers, the homework also gives you very good insights into what types of problems a software engineer typically faces day to day at Shapr3D.

Based on historical data, we've learned that candidates usually spend anywhere between 8 to 16 hours completing the homework exercise. We know that’s a lot! We appreciate your commitment and always make sure to pair it with detailed feedback on your solution, no matter the outcome. We are also conscious that you might wonder why so much, so early in the process? There are a few reasons:

Some tips to navigate the take home test stage:

4. On-site interview

If your homework results are successful, you’ll be invited to our office for a series of interviews with potential team members and management.

Tips on how you can be successful in the final mile:

The best advice we can give for the cultural interview is to come prepared with specific examples from your past that generally portray your own principles and values, or examples of situations where you demonstrated our values. Think of situations where you solved a complex problem, failures that changed your thinking, work that you are proud of, what situations or feedback you learned the most from.

In general this stage is more of an unstructured conversation. We ask a lot of open questions so we can learn a lot about you, and we encourage you to do the same!

Best of luck on your application process, and if you haven’t already, check out another useful link about our engineering team & culture here.