I’m a technical recruiter at Shopify (focused on R&D roles), and we work hard to make sure everyone who meets our team feels like they’ve had an opportunity to express their abilities.
Our talent acquisition team is not interested in making hiring decisions for a multi-billion dollar company based on age or whether you want to go clubbing.
We base our hiring decisions on some of these things:
a) impact at previous companies/projects and ability to get shit done
b) complexity of projects you’ve tackled
c) potential for growth
d) ___domain knowledge/technical expertise for the project we think you would be a match for
e) and yes, values alignment
We value people who have had a big impact in their previous companies or roles, who have been super engaged in past projects, and who can reflect on past experiences to learn what worked, and even more, what didn’t work. These are all positive signals for us and are important to being successful here.
Hopefully this clears some misconceptions up, even if your experience wasn’t great.
So is it true that the screening interview is with 2-3 non-technical HR people?
If so, that's completely incompatible with the procedure you've outlined. Non-technical people are by definition not capable of evaluating points a), b), c), or d) on your list.
Our talent acquisition team is not interested in making hiring decisions for a multi-billion dollar company based on age or whether you want to go clubbing.
We base our hiring decisions on some of these things: a) impact at previous companies/projects and ability to get shit done b) complexity of projects you’ve tackled c) potential for growth d) ___domain knowledge/technical expertise for the project we think you would be a match for e) and yes, values alignment
We value people who have had a big impact in their previous companies or roles, who have been super engaged in past projects, and who can reflect on past experiences to learn what worked, and even more, what didn’t work. These are all positive signals for us and are important to being successful here.
Hopefully this clears some misconceptions up, even if your experience wasn’t great.