Xjyuk

You realise most people here would kill for a one hour interview that resulted in a job offer the next day, right?! That's great!

I'd figured there be some follow-up interviews where we can go more in depth of my coding abilities and system architects logic.

IMHO, I'm glad more companies are actually moving away from this style of all-day really in-depth whiteboard / algorithm coding interview technique - as it really tells you very little above and beyond the hour or so interview that you describe:

• It's very easy for any candidate desperate for work to revise that sort of stuff in advance, spit it out on the whiteboard, and be next to useless in the day job. On the other hand, good candidates that may not bother (because they're likely to get hired somewhere decent anyway) might get passed up.


• If someone doesn't have a clue what they're doing, it's very rare that doesn't become apparent in an hour or so's worth of technical conversation. You'd usually smell a rat in the first 5 minutes.


• The longer the process is, the more likely it is that good candidates will receive offers elsewhere in the meantime, and so disappear before the company has a chance to evaluate them.

Nothing shady about it. If anything I'd congratulate them for having an interview process that's quick, short, efficient and to the point.

Interviews serve two purposes, both very important. One is for the employer to assess whether you are a good person for the job.

The other is for you to assess whether you want to work for the employer.

A one-hour many-on-one interview isn't a great way for you to make your assessment, as you know.

You can say to the hiring manager something like "Thanks for the offer. I'm really interested in working for you. Is it possible for me to have a couple of conversations with the other members of your group, to get to know you all a little better?"

It's a reasonable request from any potential employee. And, you're in a strong position because you already have an offer in hand.

Having been vetted for security clearance and passing a one hour conference can in some cases be pretty normal - especially if they're in need of a particular skill.

I got hired to one of my nicest jobs in a similar fashion (basically a team of 20 people eating pizza and interviewing me). I don't really understand from your post what you are worried that they have up their sleeve?

The places where I have worked with a smart, competent, motivated and functional team have typically employed LESS whiteboarding/tests/various interview shenanigans.

My own theory on this is that knowledgeable technical people are able to identify others with appropriate proficiency just by asking them pertinent questions. There seems to be a direct correlation between requiring lots of hoop-jumping in the form of code samples, fizzbuzz, "gotcha" implementation or syntax questions that realistically I would go to the documentation over in the course of actual work, and the like, and an interviewer who doesn't really know their stuff, and thus is trying to generate specific responses that they can compare against an answer key of some kind.

Interview was just an one hour panel. Got offer the next day; do I take or is this a red flag?

Neither.

Maybe they are bad at interviewing, and maybe that's it and it's a great company. Or maybe it stems from incompetence at everything. Or maybe they've decided that technical interviews and/or skills aren't worth very much compared to willingness to learn and cultural fit — which might be true for their business, or might not be.

You are overthinking their process because you don't have enough information on it to do so. You might want to ask them about it and see what they say. More important, though, would be to follow the advice in O. Jones' answer and interview them. You should give yourself the opportunity to see the red flags rather than guess at them before either taking the offer or (if you are indeed very interested and it's worth your time) rejecting it.

For many companies, the style you described is absolute standard. If these are companies that you wouldn't want to work for because of this, that is of course your decision. But you shouldn't consider it a exceptional behavior or red flag.

I always wondered how common 'show-coding' interviews really are - I have been in panel interviews for at least forty hires in the last fifteen years, and we never would dream of such an interview style.

Coding capabilities are not the most important thing in the selection process (for us), and they can also be improved rather easily. We ask some questions, to verify you really know the language you claim you know, but more than that we value attitude, spirit, communication and other soft skills, and the impression someone gives about smartness and 'teachability'. In other (harsher) words, if you think you know it all already, we might not want to hire you.

Should I be concern on how they did their interviewing process or am I just overthinking it?

You are overthinking it. I once had an interview which was over before I had finished my coffee (took the job) and I once gotten an offer while walking back from the interview to my car (did not take the job). My previous job I landed after a more "normal" process (multi-round interview, offer a few days later). Took the offer, only to find out within a few months that that was a bad decision, and I moved on. Current job? One interview where I interviewed for two positions at the same time (developer and sysadmin), followed by a few weeks of silence, and then a phone call "Can you meet with the CEO tomorrow, he'll make an offer, and can you start next week?" I've been holding that gig for 12.5 years now, and counting.

I've also done 13 interviews (at the same company) in a day (no offer due to visa complications), a 7 AM interview with dozens and dozens of rapidly fired technical questions (they found me overqualified so they didn't make an offer) and an interview process lasting weeks were they slowly whittled down from 60 candidates until they were left with me (took their offer).

And then there are the gazillion times of "we'll get back to you" after the first interview, I'm still waiting for.

My point is that there are many ways companies do their interviews. There isn't a right way to do interviews (as in, there is not a single right way which works for everyone). And from the outside, it's very hard to judge whether a company's style of interviewing is one that works for them. Don't read to much into it. Take it as it is, and if you don't feel comfortable with it (and I do realize that that is very subjective), look elsewhere.

Interviews don't have to be the long, grueling affairs that some employers make them. Interviewing is often about "fit", as in "Do you fit in their culture?". For some places, the interviewers believe they can figure this out quickly. Furthermore, people often assume your resume tells the story of what you've done and/or they ask just enough to figure out if it (the resume) is truthful.

As noted elsewhere, already having a security clearance is a big advantage in certain environments. So, if you already have the skills they want and the appropriate clearance, that may be all the really want. The interview may have been a formality to make sure you have a pulse and aren't a jeans & tee shirt person walking into a suit & tie kind of place (or vice versa).

My own experiences include a couple hiring processes that bear this out:

• Personally, I was once offered a job (also in the defense sector) without even interviewing. The recruiter assured me I would love the job, even though he couldn't tell me what it was. I decided not to take that job.




• The shortest actual interview I ever had was 20 minutes. (To be fair I did have to take a coding test separately, but they wouldn't have had me do that if I hadn't passed the interview.) The hiring manager saw that I had certain skills that were relevant to the job and had some experiences that were not directly related to that actual job, but of interest to him. At that point, he just said "Hire him". It wasn't a great job, but I stayed there for a few years while I took classes to improve my background for something I would like better. I then left for one of the best two jobs I've had.

I am going to be the dissenting voice here. I had this experience. I interviewed with a government contractor doing software. Just met with one or two people and got an offer. High paying offer.

It was one of the worse places I have worked. We had people that were so bad they wouldn't even bill them to the contract and it still took them forever to justify getting rid of them.

You are a body in a seat billing $200 an hour to the contract of which $100 is profit to the company. They don't care about being efficient. Efficient costs them money. I had arguments about computer equipment, doing things smart and efficient, you name it. They actually told me that being more efficient by having a second monitor was not in their best interests.

It was not all bad. There were some smart people. But they were not very prevalent and that was not the culture.

Your mileage will vary. Could be the most amazing place ever. Who knows. But bear in mind, everyone else there had as much of a screening as you did.

And just because your co-workers have clearances means nothing. A clearance just means you don't have bad debts, don't do dope, and are basically a boring person.