I was contacted by a recruiter from Procore, and before touching base with her, Procore was not in my radar at all, and I did not even know about Carpinteria. I had a wonderful introduction chat over the phone with the recruiter, and after chatting with her in the phone, I was so intrigued by Procore that I researched the company construction tech (a field that also was never in my radar until after that call) in depth. I ran into some data about how construction is the 2nd largest industry in the US, and how there's a huge gap between construction and technology that Procore is actively trying to address. I've never been so interested about a particular industry and company until then.
The next step was a video call with the hiring manager. That went really smoothly. I knew I put in my best foot forward, and not too long after that I was scheduled for a tech screen with one of the engineers at Procore. That tech screen was also seamless, and pair-coding online via Zoom was almost as relaxing as when I do it with my co-workers. It did not feel like I was in an interview session at all.
The next step was an on-site where Procore scheduled me to fly in to be in their Carpinteria office for a day. The recruiting logistics team was hands down one of the best I've worked with. Through a third-party service, they had me select a schedule where I'd be staying in Santa Barbara for one night, and either fly in or fly out the same day as the interview. I requested if I could instead fly in a day before and fly out a day after the interview, to allow for a more relaxed on-site schedule, and I got a response within the hour to do this. And they did well with booking the car and the hotel for the on-site as well as giving me tips on how to prepare for the day of the on-site interview.
The on-site interview itself was probably the smoothest interview I've ever been in more than a decade in my profession. On-site interviews are generally stressful, and the Procore staff extended a lot of effort to make it less stressful. After a tour of the beautiful campus in Carpinteria, I was led to a room overlooking the Pacific Ocean. My panel of interviewers met me there and I was allowed to introduce and talk about myself as they introduced themselves to me. Imagine the relief of having to do that only once during the day, instead of having to talk about yourself, your background, your experiences, etc. over and over again to different people throughout the day.
After the round-table introduction, I spent time with each of the people in my interview panel, going through a culture discussion, a pair-coding session, a whiteboarding session, and a chat about leadership values. I think I did a good job of hiding just how nervous I was throughout that afternoon, mostly because each of the panel made it seem like I was in the room with my peers. I left the on-site interview feeling good about how the day went. And not worrying whether I would get an offer or not, I went ahead and sent thank you notes for every person in my interview panel for a wonderful on-site interview.
I heard back from my recruiter a couple of days later with good news, and she was very accommodating in giving me time to think about my decision and compare Procore's offers with everything else that I had on the table. I eventually ended up giving my decision about week later.
