Our Interview Process

Applying for a job at CarbonChain? Here's what to expect if you're invited for interview.

Thanks for your interest in working at CarbonChain. To help you prepare for the interview process, we've put together some guidance notes on what to expect. Depending on the role you're applying for, some details may differ, but many ingredients will be the same.

What are we testing for?

We’re trying to evaluate whether you’ll be a high performer at the role you’re applying for, and whether you’re a good cultural fit with our values. These are:

• Customer obsession
  Customer focus defines the trajectory of our business. It’s at the core of every person’s thought process. Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers. We make an impact by helping our customers reduce their emissions. We seek customers who can have a large impact on global emissions.

• Ownership
  Leaders are owners. They think long term and don't sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their team. They never say "that's not my job.” We take ownership of tough problems and solve them. We bottom things out if we need to.

• Deliver results
  Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle.

• Insist on the highest standards
  Leaders have relentlessly high standards - many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed.

Throughout the process, you can expect to be asked questions which evaluate how well you’ve exhibited these values in your previous roles and projects. We love to hear about specific examples where you’ve really embodied these principles.

The process

☎️ Initial phone screen

If your cover letter and CV look like you might be a good fit for CarbonChain, the process will begin with a phone screen.

This will be a 30 minute interview to learn more about your background, and to assess cultural fit. We will select a single CarbonChain value and dive deep on that value with a question about your past work experience.

Ahead of this interview we recommend that you refresh your memory of your CV and any other material you provided to us, such as LinkedIn or Github pages.

This interview is also a great opportunity for you to ask questions and build your understanding of CarbonChain and the role.

🤓 Technical task

After the phone screen, the next stage is a technical task. This might be a take-home or a live exercise depending upon the role.

We’ll typically ask you to complete the test in the week after the phone screen, but we appreciate that everybody has their own constraints. We’re happy to fit in around your timelines. We expect it to take 2-5 hours.

In all cases, the kind of things we’re looking for are:

• Does the work achieve the outcome we were looking for?
• Can you clearly communicate what you’ve done? When challenged, can you defend choices you’ve made?
• What’s it like to work with you? How do you take feedback and think things through with your potential colleagues?
• How well do you understand the context of the task you’re doing? How much have you figured out about the domain?

For many roles, we’ll address these questions in a separate review session, also online. In those cases, we’ll ask you to expand upon the solution you submitted, to get a feel for what it’s like to pair program with you.

🤝 In-person panel

If you get to the final round, congratulations! You’ll be invited to an in-person round of interviews at our London office (LABS Triangle, Camden Lock Market).

This round typically consists of 3 or 4 interviews (over the course of about half a day). You'll meet our co-founders (Adam and Roheet) and one or two of our leadership team.

In this round you can expect more focus on whether you’re a strong cultural fit with our values. In a series of one-to-one interviews you'll be asked questions that give you the opportunity to demonstrate how you’d fit into the team, what your aspirations are, and how well you’d interact with people in different roles within the organisation. We encourage you to use different examples in each interview. Your examples will be discussed among the panel when making the final decision.

Next steps

We do our best to meet and evaluate the outcome of the full interview process within 24 hours. Everybody who has been involved in the interview process will contribute their thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses we observed during the process.

Hopefully we’ll then be in touch to extend an offer 🙌🏼

Once you’ve accepted an offer

We’ll ask you to provide 3 references, at least one of which is a direct manager.

We’ll give each of these a 10 minute call to get a better understanding of what you’re like to work with, and how we can set you up for success at CarbonChain.