The Evolution of the Betterment Engineering Interview

Building and maintaining the world’s largest independent robo-advisor requires a world-class team of engineers. This means we must continuously iterate on our recruiting process to remain competitive in attracting and hiring top talent.

As our team has grown from five to more than 70 engineers, we’ve significantly improved our ability to make clear hiring decisions while shortening our hiring timeline.

Back in the Day

Here’s how our interview process once looked:

1. Resumé review
2. Initial phone screen
3. Technical phone screen

Onsite: Day 1

1. Technical interview (computer science fundamentals)
2. Technical interview (modelling and app design)
3. Hiring manager interview

Onsite: Day 2

1. Product and design interview
2. Company founder interview
3. Company executive interview

The main recurring issue was that hiring managers were left uncertain as to whether a candidate truly possessed the technical aptitude and skills to justify making them an employment offer.

While we tried to construct computer science and data modeling problems that led to informative interviews, watching candidates solve these problems still wasn’t getting to the heart of whether they’d be successful engineers once at Betterment.

In addition to problems arising from the types of questions asked, we saw that one of our primary interview tools, the whiteboard, was actually getting in the way; many candidates struggled to communicate their coding solutions using a whiteboard in an interview setting.

The last straw for using whiteboards came from feedback provided by Betterment’s Women in Technology group. When I sat down with them to solicit feedback on our entire hiring process, they pointed to the whiteboard problem-solving dynamics (one to two engineers sitting, observing, and judging the candidate standing at a whiteboard) as unnatural and awkward.

It was clear this part of the interviewing process needed to go. We would continue to allow candidates the choice of using a whiteboard if they wished, but it would no longer be the default method for communicating solutions to our interview questions.

If we did away with the whiteboard, then what would we use?

The most obvious alternative was a computer, but many of our engineers expressed concerns with this method, having had bad experiences with computer-based interviews in the past.

After spirited internal discussions we landed on a simple principle: we should provide candidates the most natural setting possible to demonstrate their abilities. Agreement on this principle led to a straightforward answer: Our technical interviews switched from whiteboards to computers.

Within the boundaries of that principle, we considered multiple interview formats, including take-home and online assessments, and several variations of pair programming interviews. In the end, we landed on our own flavor of a pair programming interview.

Today: A Better Interview

Here’s our revised interview process:

1. Resumé review
2. Initial phone screen
3. Technical phone screen

Onsite

1. Technical interview 1 — non-technical questions, setup pair-programming laptop, and begin pair-programming (optional, time permitting)
2. Technical interview 2 — pair programming
3. Technical interview 3 — pair programming
4. Ask-Me-Anything session
5. Product and design interview
6. Hiring manager interview
7. Company executive interview

While an interview setting may not offer pair programming in its purest sense, our interviewers truly participate in the process of writing software with the candidates. Instead of simply instructing and watching candidates as they program, interviewers partner with them on a real-world problem, in a collaborative, not adversarial, environment. This approach puts candidates at ease and feels closer to typical pair programming than one might expect. As a result, in addition to learning how well a candidate can write code, we learn how they work with others.

We also split the main programming portion of our original interview into separate sections with different interviewers. It’s nice to give candidates a short break in between interviews, but another reason for the separation is to evaluate the handoff. We like to see how a candidate explains the design decisions and progress from one interviewer to the next.

Other Improvements

We also streamlined our question-asking process and hiring timeline, and added an opportunity for candidates to speak with non-interviewers.

Questions

Interviews are now more prescriptive regarding non-technical questions. Instead of multiple interviewers asking a candidate the same warm-up questions based on their resumé, we prescribe separate topics for each interviewer based on the most important core competencies of successful (Betterment) engineers.

Each interviewer knows which competencies (e.g., software craftsmanship, continuous development) to evaluate. Sample questions, not scripts, are provided, and interviewers are encouraged to tailor the competency questions to the candidates based on their backgrounds.

Timeline

Another change is that the entire onsite interview is completed in a single day. This can make scheduling difficult, but in a city as competitive as New York is for engineering talent, we’ve found it valuable to get to the final offer stage as quickly as possible.

Discussion

Finally, we’ve added an Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) session — another idea provided by our Women in Technology group.

While we encourage candidates to ask questions of everyone they meet, the AMA provides an opportunity to meet with Betterment engineers who aren’t involved in the hiring decision. Those “interviewers” don’t fill out a scorecard, and our hiring managers abstain from discussing candidates with them.

ShipIt

Our hiring managers now report that they have a much clearer understanding of what each candidate brings to the table. In addition, we’ve consistently received high marks from candidates and interviewers alike, who prefer our revamped approach.

While we didn’t run a scientifically valid split-test for the new process versus the old (it would’ve taken years to reach statistical significance), our hiring metrics have improved across the board.

We’re happy with the changes to our process, and we feel that it does a great job of fully and honestly evaluating a candidate’s abilities, which helps Betterment to continue growing its world-class team.

For more information about working at Betterment, please visit our Careers page.