Interviewed with the Asana team in May/June 2019. I met with approx 8 members of the Asana team, the interview process was approx 4 weeks. Pretty standard questions with the format as per below;
- Recruiter Screening - 30-minute call around past experiences and motivations for Asana etc.
- Hiring Manager - Hangout (Based in SF)- Panel Presentation
- Panel Presentation with Hiring Manager & Customer Success Manager (Based in SF)
- 30 Minute call with a member of US Team
Onsite Face to Face meetings in Dublin
- Head of Online Sales Team
- Sales Team EBU Sales
- CS Leader
The process started out impressive with good engagement from the recruiter, however, this seemed to taper off as the process progressed over the 4 weeks. There was a significant change to the role midway through the process, which understandably can happen with a new EMEA role, however, I feel this could have been communicated by the recruiter with a 5-minute phone-call rather than an e-mail, to simply clarify the impact this would have on the role and in preparation for the panel interview. Overall there was minimal support, particularly for the Panel Presentation stage.
The interviewers were very impressive, standard competency-based questions, although they seemed to ensure each interviewer assessed different areas so there was no real overlap which was great. They were all quite passionate about Asana, which got me very excited about the role, the team and Asana overall, they really sold it to me.
After the onsite interviews, the recruiter confirmed she would be in contact the following Wednesday with an update. Unfortunately, the phone call never came on Wednesday, or Thursday and finally on Friday at 5.36pm I received the following e-mail message "The team has a chance to debrief in relation to next steps and unfortunately we will not be moving forward with an offer at this time. Please let me know if you would like to schedule a call to go through feedback in more detail and I'd be happy to set that up".
While it was disappointing to not get the role, which can be for any number of reasons, to receive a rejection e-mail on a Friday evening with no feedback at all from the recruiter, has left me with a negative experience. I followed up with the recruiter twice to set up a 5-minute call to understand a little more but unfortunately, 1 month later, I have yet to receive any further communication from Asana or the recruitment team.
The valuable time taken to not only meet with the team over 4 weeks but also preparation time, should not be underestimated or disregarded just because a candidate is not moved to the Offer stage. If I had received a 5-minute phone call to go through one or two points of feedback, especially as I have requested this twice since the onsite interviews, I would have felt my time was respected and would have been left me with a very positive impression of Asana, regardless of the outcome, unfortunately I've been left with the opposite impression.