Software Engineer: interview process

The interview process will take around three hours in total. There are three stages:

Stage 1 - Telephone chat (30 mins)
The first stage is a fairly freeform telephone call where you’ll get to chat to a senior member of the team. It’s an opportunity for you both to introduce yourselves, and we’ll ask what you’re looking for in your next role to see if Care Sourcer meets those requirements. We can chat about whether your skills and motivations seem like a good match for the role, and we’ll cover some admin questions about location, salary expectations, your right to work in the UK and your notice period.
Stage 2 - CV chat & ‘Teach Us’ session (1 hr 45 mins)

This second stage is a two part video call and takes around 1 hour 45 mins.

You’ll get to meet a senior member of the team (normally who you spoke to during your telephone chat) and two other members of the engineering team. This gives you the opportunity to ask questions to people in the team with varying perspectives and to get a feel for the people you would be working with.

Part 1: Discussion of your experience to date (50 mins)

A senior member of the team and one other member of the team will go through your CV and talk about your previous experience. We’ll ask about your contributions, how you worked with other people and your exposure to languages, frameworks and working practices.

The sort of things we might ask about are:

your individual responsibilities on a given project
how you interacted with other stakeholders/engineers
how you approached your work
what technologies you have used and the depth of your experience
This will help us to develop on some of the points we discussed in your telephone chat.

Break (10 mins)

There will be a short break of 10 minutes. Time for a cup of tea!

Part 2: ‘Teach Us’ session (45 mins)

In this section you will spend a maximum of 10 minutes teaching us about a programming topic that you think is interesting and relevant to Care Sourcer, with a bit of time for questions afterwards. This will be hosted on a video call, so you can either verbally explain the topic or share your screen to do a presentation, live coding demo or any other format that works for you.

The topic is completely your choice. Examples of sessions we’ve had in the past include: ‘CSS media queries’, ‘CSS Preprocessors’, ‘Cross Site Scripting’ and ‘My favourite React feature’.

We’re looking to see that you can communicate programming concepts in an engaging and clear manner and are comfortable with us asking questions about the topic.

Stage 3 - Founder chat (30 mins)

In this stage you’ll have a video call to meet one of the Care Sourcer founders for 30 mins.

This is your chance to ask questions about the company as a whole. You will also learn about where we have come from as a company and where we are headed.

We’re looking to build a picture of who you are, your strengths, and your motivations. More specifically we want to understand:

  • the depth and breadth of your experience with our current technology stack or similar
  • how transferable your experiences and knowledge are to our work
  • the level and type of support from your team that would be optimal for you to learn and develop
  • your willingness to learn and adapt
  • what you enjoy doing at work – learning new things, improving processes, collaborating with and supporting others, focussing on product work – what really gets you motivated?

There are no wrong answers – this all contribute to an honest overall picture that helps us understand how you can add to our team and how we can support you in delivering your best work.

Equally, we want to make sure you have the information you need to know if Care Sourcer is right for you. We encourage you to ask as many questions as you need to get that answer. 

If you have any questions about our interview process, please contact v.dryden@caresourcer.com.